The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens

An accessible and reliable introduction to the life and works of Charles Dickens, offering a unique combination of academic biography and literary analysis

The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens explores the relationship between Dickens’ lived experience and his works, discussing themes within and key influences on literary classics such as Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, and Great Expectations. An excellent introduction to the world of Dickens scholarship, this easily accessible volume provides the necessary background about the author’s life while encouraging readers to critically analyze Dickens’ works.

Organized thematically by chapter, the book opens with a brief overview of Dickens’ life and a chronology of major works. Subsequent chapters focus on key aspects of Dickens’ life, concluding with case studies of selected texts that demonstrate the similarities between events in Dickens’ own life and the literature he was writing at the time. Throughout the book, readers are provided with an informative portrait of Dickens’ early family life, personal relationships, professional networks, social circles, travels abroad, charitable works, financial issues, dealings with publishers, and much more.

• Incorporates the latest discussions in Dickens research alongside documents and materials from Dickens’ time
• Discusses the afterlife of Dickens in film, theater, and television, including A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ most adapted story
• Features archival material from the Charles Dickens Museum and discussion of Dickens’ roles as a journalist, editor, and professional reader
• Includes short case studies at the end of each chapter to demonstrate the ways Dickens’ life informed his work

The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens is an ideal introductory textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in English Literature and Victorian Literature courses, as well as a valuable resource for Dickens scholars and enthusiasts.

PETE ORFORD is the Course Director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies run by the University of Buckingham and the Charles Dickens Museum in London. He is the author of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel & Our Endless Attempts to End It, and the editor of Pictures from Italy for the Oxford Dickens. He has contributed several articles and chapters to significant works including The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens and The Blackwell Companion to Charles Dickens.

Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction: A Life in Brief 1

1 Young Dickens 18

2 Dickens the Reporter 34

3 Dickens’s Angels 49

4 Dickens and Theatre 67

5 Dickens Abroad 88

6 Boz to Man: Dickens, Serialisation and ‘The Turning Point’ 105

7 Dickens and Charity 123

8 Dickens and Money 141

9 Dickens’s Literary Network 158

10 Dickens and Separation 180

11 Dickens on Tour 201

12 The End of Dickens 221

Afterword, Afterlife: Dickens’s Posthumous Reputation 241

Index 260

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