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Charles Dickens

An Introduction

Jenny Hartley

27 October 2016

ISBN: 9780198788164

176 pages
Hardback
Othermm

Price: £10.99

Jenny Hartley introduces Charles Dickens's life and works, looking at the vitality of his characters and the energy which surges through his writing. Examining the themes running through his books, she considers the institutions which influenced his work (such as the workhouse) and looks at his critique of nineteenth century society.

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Description

Jenny Hartley introduces Charles Dickens's life and works, looking at the vitality of his characters and the energy which surges through his writing. Examining the themes running through his books, she considers the institutions which influenced his work (such as the workhouse) and looks at his critique of nineteenth century society.

  • Covers the life and work of Charles Dickens, with examples taken from all his major works and writing
  • Considers the key themes in Dickens's novels, and the way in which he used his writing to critique the great dehumanising structures, ideologies, and bureaucracies of nineteenth-century Britain
  • Examines the potent and multiple after-lives of Dickens's novels, and their ongoing impact today
  • Explores Dickens's own career and life, and the influence this had on his writing
  • Discusses Dickens's treatment by critics through the ages

About the Author(s)

Jenny Hartley, Professor of English, University of Roehampton

Jenny Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Roehampton. She is the author of Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women (Methuen, 2008) and the editor of The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (OUP, 2012). She has also published The Reading Groups Book (2001, 2002) with OUP. She is Scholar in Residence at the Charles Dickens Museum, and President of the International Dickens Fellowship 2013-2015.

Table of Contents

    1:More
    2:Public and private
    3:Character and plot
    4:City laureate
    5:Radical Dickens
    6:Dickensian
    Timeline
    Further Reading
    Index

Reviews

"Jenny Hartley's Charles Dickens: An Introduction serves as a compact and effective first guide to novice readers of Dickens. Hartley successfully combines biographical and period context with short stretches of literary analysis, packed efficiently into the space of 151 pages." - Natalie B. Cole, Dickens Quarterly

"fair, entertaining and careful chronicler of Dickens's life, and an illuminating and inspiring reader of his works. For those unfamiliar with his writing, Charles Dickens: An introduction offers the best brief guide now available. For those of us who know it well, it encourages us to return to Dickens with renewed enthusiasm and an enlarged heart" - Times Literary Supplement

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