Dickens Society Blog: Call for Posts


The Dickens Society blog is aimed at disseminating Dickensian research both amongst the Society’s membership and to the larger academic community. We welcome ongoing submissions from researchers at any career level on any topic relating to Dickens’s life, work, or world – if you would...

Finding Bleak House in Martin Chuzzlewit


This post has been contributed by Matthew Redmond. As many of us know too well, The Modern Library prefaces every Dickens novel with a three-page headnote titled “Charles Dickens,” which strives to outline certain crucial moments of his life and career. Perhaps the biggest turning...

Dickens and Dog-Drama: the Walworth Dog meets the Uncommercial Traveller


This post has been contributed by Dr Ann Featherstone (University of Manchester). Dickens is well-known for his love of theatre, whether it was Christmas treats at Drury Lane or a bloody melodrama at the Victoria Theatre in the New Cut. But in the guise of...

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Dickens and the Underdog


This post has been contributed by Catherine Burgass, a Lecturer and Honorary Research Fellow at Staffordshire University with a specialism in local literary studies. She also teaches at Keele University Continuing Education. The use of animal metaphors for mechanical or human subjects is a common...

“I and my fellows are ministers of Fate”: Dickens and his beloved Ariel, Priscilla Horton


This post has been contributed by Katie Bell. Katie is a PhD student at the University of Leicester. Her thesis is titled “The Diaspora of Dickens: Death, Decay and Regeneration”, the focus of which is the intertextuality of Dickens’s works and 20th century American texts...

Article in Progress: “Then, I go among the Germans”: Klein Dorrit (1934)


This post has been contributed by Andrea Schmidt, who is currently a Visiting Instructor of German at Willamette University. She has research interests in nineteenth century British/German literatures and contemporary film.  In an era of rising nationalism, a Czech born director brought an adaptation of...

Man and Meat: A Christmas Carol’s Cannibalistic Menace in Historical Perspective


This post has been contributed by Lydia Craig. First the villain and then the hero of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), the cold-hearted and wealthy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge initially refuses to empathize with or financially contribute towards the nourishment of London’s poor until bullied,...

Dickens Society Blog: Call for Posts


Last year, the Dickens Society launched the Dickens Society Blog, aimed at disseminating Dickensian research both amongst the Society’s membership and to the larger academic community. We welcome ongoing submissions from researchers at any career level on any topic relating to Dickens’s life, work, or...

Victorian Passions: An Exhibition and Symposium Honoring The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection at the University of Delaware Library


Starting 14 February, when walking up to the second floor of the University of Delaware’s Morris Library you will encounter a Kelmscott Chaucer; the copy of The Stones of Venice Ruskin gave to Thomas Carlyle; Anthony Trollope’s copy of Forster’s The Life of Charles Dickens;...

The Man Who Invented Christmas to Become a Feature Film


This post has been contributed by Gina Dalfonzo. In 2011, historian and author Les Standiford published The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. The book was an insightful, very thorough exploration of the...