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This volume places Dickens at the centre of a dynamic and expanding
Victorian print world and tells the story of his career against a
background of options available to him. The collection describes a
world animated by outpourings of print materials: books, serials,
newspapers, periodicals, libraries, paintings and prints, parodies
and plagiarisms, censorship, advertising, as well as theatre and
other entertainment, and celebrity. It also shows this period as
driven by a growing and more literate population, and undergirded
by a general conviction that writing was a crucial component of
governance and civic culture. The extensive introduction and
selected articles anchor Dickens's attempts to establish better
conditions for writers regarding copyright protection, pay, status,
recognition, and effectiveness in altering public policy. They
speak about Dickens's life as playwright, journalist, novelist,
editor, magazine publisher, theatrical producer, actor, lecturer,
reader of his own works, supporter of charities for impoverished
authors and fallen women, exponent of a morality of Christian
compassion and domestic affections sometimes put into question by
his own actions, proponent and critic of British nationalism, and
champion of education for all. This selection of essays and
articles from previously published accounts by internationally
renowned scholars is of interest to all students and professionals
who are fascinated by the composition, manufacture, finance,
formats, pictorializations, sales, advertising and influence of
Dickens's writing.
This volume places Dickens at the centre of a dynamic and expanding
Victorian print world and tells the story of his career against a
background of options available to him. The collection describes a
world animated by outpourings of print materials: books, serials,
newspapers, periodicals, libraries, paintings and prints, parodies
and plagiarisms, censorship, advertising, as well as theatre and
other entertainment, and celebrity. It also shows this period as
driven by a growing and more literate population, and undergirded
by a general conviction that writing was a crucial component of
governance and civic culture. The extensive introduction and
selected articles anchor Dickens's attempts to establish better
conditions for writers regarding copyright protection, pay, status,
recognition, and effectiveness in altering public policy. They
speak about Dickens's life as playwright, journalist, novelist,
editor, magazine publisher, theatrical producer, actor, lecturer,
reader of his own works, supporter of charities for impoverished
authors and fallen women, exponent of a morality of Christian
compassion and domestic affections sometimes put into question by
his own actions, proponent and critic of British nationalism, and
champion of education for all. This selection of essays and
articles from previously published accounts by internationally
renowned scholars is of interest to all students and professionals
who are fascinated by the composition, manufacture, finance,
formats, pictorializations, sales, advertising and influence of
Dickens's writing.
One of the most important British graphic artists of the
nineteenth century, George Cruikshank (1792-1878) illustrated over
860 books, including several by Charles Dickens, and produced a
vast number of etchings, paintings, and caricatures. The ten essays
collected here first appeared in a special limited edition. In a
new preface written for this paperback edition, Robert Patten shows
how the insights of these seminal essays have been amplified by
recent exhibitions and scholarship. The introduction by John Fowles
has been retained and an index has been added. In addition to the
many Cruikshank illustrations reproduced in the volume, there are
original drawings by contemporary artists David Levine and Ronald
Searle.
"Marley was dead, to begin with." Why does the most beloved of
Christmas books open with a death? What has death to do with
Christmas and New Years, and with Dickens's Christmas books and
stories over his entire life? This book starts at the Paris Morgue
and takes Dickens through his Christmas experiences from childhood
and beyond, his celebrations of the season, and the sorrows that he
often reviews in the New Year. Robert L. Patten weaves together
Dickens's life, career, writings, journalism, travel, theatrical
presentations, and religious convictions to offer a richly designed
and entertaining narrative, fulsomely illustrated, of the manifold
ways Dickens figures the spirit and traditions of the winter
holidays in Victorian England. Both the gothic of ghosts and
retribution and what he saw as the grotesque of lower-class
enjoyment surface importantly in Dickens's fantasies. This volume
discloses many hitherto overlooked connections between Dickens's
writings and life and arrives at some surprising conclusions about
Dickens's imagination, understanding of the conditions and meaning
of Christian life, and the failures of British society to meet the
pressing needs of its people. Not only does it address the public
reception of these writings; it also tracks the responses and
understandings of Dickens's illustrators, friends who found novel
ways of telling, and mis-telling, the stories.
The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens is a comprehensive and
up-to-date collection on Dickens's life and works. It includes
original chapters on all of Dickens's writing and new
considerations of his contexts, from the social, political, and
economic to the scientific, commercial, and religious. The
contributions speak in new ways about his depictions of families,
environmental degradation, and improvements of the industrial age,
as well as the law, charity, and communications. His treatment of
gender, his mastery of prose in all its varieties and genres, and
his range of affects and dramatization all come under stimulating
reconsideration. His understanding of British history, of empire
and colonization, of his own nation and foreign ones, and of
selfhood and otherness, like all the other topics, is explained in
terms easy to comprehend and profoundly relevant to global
modernity.
The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens is a comprehensive and
up-to-date collection on Dickens's life and works. It includes
original chapters on all of Dickens's writing and new
considerations of his contexts, from the social, political, and
economic to the scientific, commercial, and religious. The
contributions speak in new ways about his depictions of families,
environmental degradation, and improvements of the industrial age,
as well as the law, charity, and communications. His treatment of
gender, his mastery of prose in all its varieties and genres, and
his range of affects and dramatization all come under stimulating
reconsideration. His understanding of British history, of empire
and colonization, of his own nation and foreign ones, and of
selfhood and otherness, like all the other topics, is explained in
terms easy to comprehend and profoundly relevant to global
modernity.
Winner of the 2012 Colby Prize Dickens' rise to fame and his
world-wide popularity were by no means inevitable. He started out
with no clear career in mind, drifting in and out of the theatre,
journalism and editing before finding unexpected success as a
creative writer. Taking account of everything known about Dickens's
apprentice years, Robert L. Patten narrates the fierce struggle
Dickens then had to create an alter ego, Boz, and later to contain
and extinguish him. His revision of Dickens' biography in the
context of early-Victorian social and political history and print
culture opens up a more unstable, yet more fascinating, portrait of
Dickens. The book tells the story of how Dickens created an
authorial persona that highlighted certain attributes and concealed
others about his life, talent and publications. This complicated
narrative of struggle, determination, dead ends and new beginnings
is as gripping as one of Dickens' own novels.
This innovative collection of essays addresses important issues in the history of the book. The multidisciplinary essays consider different aspects of the production, circulation, and consumption of printed texts, analyzing such topics as market trends, modes of publication, and the use of pseudonyms by women writers. Contributors draw on speech act, reader response and gender theory in addition to historical, narratological, materialist, and bibliographical perspectives to study authors such as Dickens, the Brontės and George Eliot.
This wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays addresses
important issues in cultural studies and the history of the book.
Multidisciplinary in approach, the essays consider different
aspects of the production, circulation, and consumption of printed
texts throughout the nineteenth century. Topics studied include
market trends, modes of publication, the use of pseudonyms by women
writers, readerships and reading ideologies, and copyright law; and
the book examines a wide range of printed materials, from
valentines, advertisements, illustrations, and fashionable annuals,
to the more traditional literary genres of poetry, fiction and
periodical essays. The authors under discussion include Dickens,
the Brontes, George Eliot, Meredith, and Walter Pater. Contributors
draw on speech-act, reader-response, and gender theory in addition
to various historical, narratological, materialist, and
bibliographical perspectives.
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