Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper

Representing the People

Carolyn Vellenga Berman

Contains in-depth and novel readings of some of Dickens's most politically engaged novels, including Bleak House, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, and The Pickwick Papers, along with his journalism and specific Parliamentary Papers
Explores how learning shorthand as a neophyte journalist influenced Dickens's writing career
Studies a pivotal moment in British political history and how Dickens influenced the extension of political agency to new populations
Examines the relationship between Dickens's biography, his fiction, his journalism, and his political engagement
Connects the dots between the Victorian age of paper and our own contemporary moment of exploding social media

Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper

Representing the People

Carolyn Vellenga Berman

Description

This book examines Charles Dickens's fiction alongside publications emanating from Parliament. It argues that Dickens and Parliament were engaged in competitive efforts to represent the People at a crucial moment in the history of representative democracy--when the British government was under enormous political pressure to expand the franchise beyond a narrow band of male landowners. Contending that fiction and the literature of Parliament interacted at a host of levels--jostling one another in the same bookshops--it reads Dickens's novels in tandem with blue books, the practice texts of shorthand manuals, and Dickens's journalism. It shows how his fiction mocks parliamentary form (as in Pickwick Papers), canvasses the history of parliamentary representation (as in Bleak House), and depicts the relation of the People to the state as well as commerce (as in Little Dorrit). It thus rethinks the history of the Victorian novel by examining its rivalry with Parliament in the expanding world of print publication.

Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper

Representing the People

Carolyn Vellenga Berman

Introduction: The Popular Press
Part One: The Art of Representation
1. Tracing Characters: Political Shorthand and the History of Writing
2. Breach of Privilege: Reporting, Satire, and Reform
3. Snoring for the Million: Pickwick and Parliamentary Publication
Part Two: A Parliamentary People
4. Vagabonds: Suspicious Company in Oliver Twist
5. Mirror of Bleak House: Haunting Parliament
Part Three: Decomposing Forms
6. Blue Books in Hard Times
7. Circumlocution: The Blood of the Book
8. National Dustmen: Coal and Paper
Coda: Victorian Twitter
Works Cited

Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper

Representing the People

Carolyn Vellenga Berman

Author Information

Carolyn Vellenga Berman, Associate Professor of Literature and Co-Chair of Literary Studies, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, New York City

Carolyn Vellenga Berman (Ph.D., Brown University) is an Associate Professor of literature and Co-Chair of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School, in New York City. She is the author of Creole Crossings: Domestic Fiction and the Reform of Colonial Slavery (Cornell University Press). Her articles have appeared in Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, Novel, Genre, and Nineteenth-Century Contexts and collections ranging from Just Below South (University of Virginia) to The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (Blackwell). She serves on the advisory board of the North American Victorian Studies Association and the editorial board of Dickens Studies Annual.