Essays exploring the ways in which Dickens' vision is both so much of its time, and yet has so much resonance for today. The scale of the 2012 bicentenary celebrations of Dickens's birth is testimony to his status as one of the most globally popular literary authors the world has ever seen. Yet Dickens has also become associated in the public imagination with a particular version of the Victorian past and with respectability. His continued cultural prominence and the "brand recognition" achieved by his image and images suggest that his vision reaches out beyond the Victorianperiod. Yet what is the relationship between Dickens and the modern world? Do his works offer a consoling version of the past or are they attuned to that state of uncertainty and instability we associate with the nebulous but resonant concept of modernity? This volume positions Dickens as both a literary and a cultural icon with a complex relationship to the cultural landscape in his own period and since. It seeks to demonstrate that oppositions which have pervaded approaches to Dickens - Victorian vs modern, artist vs entertainer, culture vs commerce - are false, by exploring the diversity and multiplicity of Dickens's textual and extra-textual lives. A specially commissioned Afterword by Florian Schweizer, Director of the Dickens 2012 celebrations, offers a fascinating insight into the shaping of this year-long public programme of commemoration of Dickens. Like the volume as a whole, it asks us toconsider the nature of our connection with "this quintessentially Victorian writer" and what it is about Dickens that still appeals to people around the world. Professor Juliet John holds the Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Jay Clayton, Holly Furneaux, John Drew, Michaela Mahlberg, Juliet John, Michael Hollington, Joss Marsh, Carrie Sickmann, Kim Edwardes Keates, DominicRainsford, Florian Schweizer

That the idea of Dickens and the adjective 'Dickensian' continue to have a cultural resonance which extends beyond the book-buying public almost two centuries after Dickens's birth is testimony to his sense of himself as a mass cultural artist. Juliet John contends that Dickens's popularity is unique, different even from that of Shakespeare because, writing in 'the first age of mass culture', he was instinctively aware of the changed context of art, or of the need for popular art to find its place in an age of mechanical reproduction. Dickens and Mass Culture describes the ways in which Dickens envisioned and engineered his cultural pervasiveness, the media that enabled it, and the posthumous processes - technological, commercial, ideological, and emotional - that have perpetuated it. The first part examines Dickens's cultural vision and practice - his model of authorship, journalism, public readings, relations with America, and the machine. The second explores Dickens's screen and 'heritage' afterlives, as well as the visitor attraction, 'Dickens World'. His longtime presence on the ten-pound note symbolizes the book's guiding interest in the relationship between the commercial, cultural, and political aspects of Dickens's populist vision and legacy. John argues that the aspects of his art that have underscored critical ambivalence about Dickens - his relations with money, mechanical reproduction, and the mass market in particular - have ultimately ensured both his iconic cultural status and his centrality to the academic canon.

The first major study of Dickens's villains argues that they embody the crucial fusion between the 'deviant' and the 'theatrical' aspects of Dickens's writing. Dickens's Villains locates the rationale for his theatrical characters in his political commitment to the principle of cultural inclusivity and his related resistance to 'psychology'.

What did reading mean to the Victorians? This question is the key point of departure for Reading and the Victorians, an examination of the era when reading underwent a swifter and more radical transformation than at any other moment in history. With book production handed over to the machines and mass education boosting literacy to unprecedented levels, the norms of modern reading were being established. Essays examine the impact of tallow candles on Victorian reading, the reading practices encouraged by Mudie's Select Library and feminist periodicals, the relationship between author and reader as reflected in manuscript revisions and corrections, the experience of reading women's diaries, models of literacy in Our Mutual Friend, the implications of reading marks in Victorian texts, how computer technology has assisted the study of nineteenth-century reading practices, how Gladstone read his personal library, and what contemporary non-academic readers might owe to Victorian ideals of reading and community. Reading forms a genuine meeting place for historians, literary scholars, theorists, librarians, and historians of the book, and this diverse collection examines nineteenth-century reading in all its personal, historical, literary, and material contexts, while also asking fundamental questions about how we read the Victorians' reading in the present day.

What did reading mean to the Victorians? This question is the key point of departure for Reading and the Victorians, an examination of the era when reading underwent a swifter and more radical transformation than at any other moment in history. With book production handed over to the machines and mass education boosting literacy to unprecedented levels, the norms of modern reading were being established. Essays examine the impact of tallow candles on Victorian reading, the reading practices encouraged by Mudie's Select Library and feminist periodicals, the relationship between author and reader as reflected in manuscript revisions and corrections, the experience of reading women's diaries, models of literacy in Our Mutual Friend, the implications of reading marks in Victorian texts, how computer technology has assisted the study of nineteenth-century reading practices, how Gladstone read his personal library, and what contemporary non-academic readers might owe to Victorian ideals of reading and community. Reading forms a genuine meeting place for historians, literary scholars, theorists, librarians, and historians of the book, and this diverse collection examines nineteenth-century reading in all its personal, historical, literary, and material contexts, while also asking fundamental questions about how we read the Victorians' reading in the present day.

Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" (c.1850) is one of the most significant novels of the Victorian era and, having been adapted for both stage and screen, retains its impact in the cultural consciousness of many nations.
Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Dickens's novel offers:
- extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and interpretations of the text, from publication to the present
- annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself
- cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
- suggestions for further reading.
Part of the "Routledge Guides to Literature" series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of "Oliver" "Twist "and seeking a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Dickens's text.

Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" (c.1850) is one of the most significant novels of the Victorian era and, having been adapted for both stage and screen, retains its impact in the cultural consciousness of many nations.
Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Dickens's novel offers:
- extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and interpretations of the text, from publication to the present
- annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself
- cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
- suggestions for further reading.
Part of the "Routledge Guides to Literature" series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of "Oliver" "Twist "and seeking a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Dickens's text.

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture is a major contribution to the dynamic field of Victorian studies. This collection of 37 original chapters by leading international Victorian scholars offers new approaches to familiar themes including science, religion, and gender, and gives space to newer and emerging topics including old age, fair play, and economics. Structured around three broad sections (on 'Ways of Being: Identity and Ideology', 'Ways of Understanding: Knowledge and Belief', and 'Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures', the volume is sub-divided into 9 sub-sections each with its own 'lead' essay: on subjectivity, politics, gender and sexuality, place and race, religion, science, material and mass culture, aesthetics and visual culture, and theatrical culture. The collection, like today's Victorian studies, is thoroughly interdisciplinary and yet its substantial Introduction explores a concern which is evident both implicitly and explicitly in the volume's essays: that is, the nature and status of 'literary' culture and the literary from the Victorian period to the present. The diverse and wide-ranging essays present original scholarship framed accessibly for a mixed readership of advanced undergraduates, graduate students and established scholars.

That the idea of Dickens and the adjective 'Dickensian' continue to have a cultural resonance which extends beyond the book-buying public almost two centuries after Dickens's birth is testimony to his sense of himself as a mass cultural artist. Juliet John contends that Dickens's popularity is unique, different even from that of Shakespeare because, writing in 'the first age of mass culture', he was instinctively aware of the changed context of art, or of the need for popular art to find its place in an age of mechanical reproduction. Dickens and Mass Culture describes the ways in which Dickens envisioned and engineered his cultural pervasiveness, the media that enabled it, and the posthumous processes - technological, commercial, ideological, and emotional - that have perpetuated it. The first part examines Dickens's cultural vision and practice - his model of authorship, journalism, public readings, relations with America, and the machine. The second explores Dickens's screen and 'heritage' afterlives, as well as the visitor attraction, 'Dickens World'. His longtime presence on the ten-pound note symbolizes the book's guiding interest in the relationship between the commercial, cultural, and political aspects of Dickens's populist vision and legacy. John argues that the aspects of his art that have underscored critical ambivalence about Dickens - his relations with money, mechanical reproduction, and the mass market in particular - have ultimately ensured both his iconic cultural status and his centrality to the academic canon.

The first major study of Dickens's villains argues that they embody the crucial fusion between the 'deviant' and the 'theatrical' aspects of Dickens's writing. Dickens's Villains locates the rationale for his theatrical characters in his political commitment to the principle of cultural inclusivity and his related resistance to 'psychology'.

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture is a major contribution to the dynamic field of Victorian studies. This collection of 37 original chapters by leading international Victorian scholars offers new approaches to familiar themes including science, religion, and gender, and gives space to newer and emerging topics including old age, fair play, and economics. Structured around three broad sections (Ways of Being: Identity and Ideology, Ways of Understanding: Knowledge and Belief, and Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures), the volume is sub-divided into nine sub-sections each with its own 'lead' essay: on subjectivity, politics, gender and sexuality, place and race, religion, science, material and mass culture, aesthetics and visual culture, and theatrical culture. The collection, like today's Victorian studies, is thoroughly interdisciplinary and yet its substantial Introduction explores a concern which is evident both implicitly and explicitly in the volume's essays: that is, the nature and status of 'literary' culture and the literary from the Victorian period to the present. The diverse and wide-ranging essays present original scholarship framed accessibly for a mixed readership of advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and established scholars.