Palgrave Advances in Charles Dickens Studies [Hardcover]

Palgrave Advances in Charles Dickens Studies is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the study of one of the most important Victorian novelists. Its editors, Robert L. Patten and John Bowen, are leading authorities on Dickens and the international team of contributors they have assembled contains some of the most exciting critics of nineteenth-century fiction writing today. The book covers the whole range of Dickens's writing and criticism about it, including biographical, theoretical and historical approaches. It is based on up-to-the-minute research and written in a lively and engaging way, and will be essential reading for all students and scholars of this canonical writer.List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction; J.Bowen& R.L.Patten Publishing in Parts; R.L.Patten Dickens and the Writing of a Life; R.Bodenheimer Performing Character; M.Andrews Dickens and Plot; H.M.Schor Visualizing Dickens; J.Sutherland From Blood to Law: the Embarrassments of Family in Dickens; H.Michie Reforming Culture; C.Waters Dickens's Reading Public; D.Vincent Politicized Dickens: The Journalism of the 1850s; J.Childers Psychoanalyzing Dickens; C.Dever Historicising Dickens; C.Robson Dickens and the Force of Writing; J.Bowen Timeline; I.Wilkinson Bibliography Index

'Bob Patten and John Bowen's collection is a state-of-the art guide to Dickens studies. The editors have assembled a distinguished team of contributors, who clearly and succinctly set forth illuminating perspectives on crucial issues of modern scholarship. Wide-ranging, detailed, and remarkably coherent, it is the best single volume of essays since George Ford and Lauriat Lane's classic The Dickens Critics first appeared nearly half a century ago, and a must for every serious student of Dickens.' - Paul Schlicke, President of the International Dickens Fellowship and Senior Lecturer in English, University of Aberdeen, UK

'[A] volume of signal importance...a model of its kind' lc'