Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

A selective list of online literary criticism for Charles Dickens, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites

Main Page | History of the Novel | 19th-C Literature | 19th-C Novel | About LiteraryHistory.com

Introduction & Lighter Reading

The Victorian Web has essays on Charles Dickens' writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian cultural and historical context.

Bleak House, a web site on the PBS production of Bleak House has brief articles on Dickens and the Victorian social and political context.

Saintsbury, George. Older criticism of Dickens' major and minor works and a biography, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21).

Clark, Robert. A substantial introduction to Charles Dickens from the Literary Encyclopedia [subscription service].

Forster, John. A reprint of old criticism, John Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens (London: Cecil Palmer, 1872-74).

Gissing, George. A reprint of older criticism, George Gissing's The Immortal Dickens (London: Cecil Palmer, 1925).

Gissing, George. Older criticism, on Gissing's Charles Dickens, A Critical Study, 1898.

Literary Criticism

Buckley, Peter G. "The Old Curiosity Shop and the New Antique Store: A Note on the Vanishing Curio in NY City," Commonplace 4, 2 (January 2004).

Jaffe, Audrey. A complete, book-length critical study, Vanishing Points: Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience (U of California P 1991). "Audrey Jaffe uses Dickens's novels and sketches to redefine narrative omniscience as a problematic that has implications for the construction of Victorian subjectivity." California Digital Library.

Lougy, Robert E. "Desire and the ideology of violence: America in Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit." Criticism, Fall 1994.

Removed

"Swinburne as a Critic. - much is learned about Swinburne himself while reading his descriptive criticism about Dickens." The New Statesman, April 14, 2003 (removed)

Craig, Amanda. "On Charles Dickens' Great Expectations." A short essay on the appeal of this novel for readers of all ages. The New Statesman, Dec 2, 2002 (removed)

Smiley, Charles. A review of Smiley's biography of Dickens, Charles Dickens, which contends that Dickens may have been "the first true celebrity." Review by David Lodge in The Atlantic Monthly Online, May 2002 (removed)

Allan, Janice M., ed. Charles Dickens's Bleak House: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2004). Reviewed in Dickens Quarterly, March, 2006, by Robert Tracy (removed)

Claybaugh, Amanda. "Dickensian Intemperance: Charity and Reform." Claybaugh begins, "The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) is now best known for having inaugurated the Victorian novel. ... After Pickwick, and because of its example, novels tended to take a single form: often illustrated, often serialized, invariably realist, and almost always socially engaged. But Pickwick was, I want to suggest, inaugural in another sense as well. It was the first novel to think through the relation between realism and social reform." [realism, reform, Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens] Novel: A Forum on Fiction, (2003) (removed).

Dowling, Andrew. Manliness and the Male Novelist in Victorian Literature. (Ashgate, 2001). Reviewed by Chris Louttit in the Dickens Quarterly, Sept, 2006 (removed).

Gribble, Jennifer. "The bible in Great Expectations." Dickens Quarterly, Dec, 2008 (removed).

Kujawska-Lis, Ewa. "Bleak House as the source of intertextuality in Somerset Maugham's 'The Round Dozen'". Dickens Quarterly, Dec, 2006 (removed).

Nayder, Lillian. A review of Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Victorian Authorship (Cornell UP 2002). Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2002, reviewed by Dawn Coleman (removed).

Novak, Daniel. "If re-collecting were forgetting: Forged bodies and forgotten labor in Little Dorrit." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 1997 (removed)

Paz, Denis G. "Dickens and Barnaby Rudge: Anti-Catholicism and Chartism." Dickens Quarterly, Sept, 2008 Reviewed by Christine Huguet (removed).

Ruth, Jennifer. "Mental capital, industrial time, and the professional in David Copperfield." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 1999 (removed).

Shuman, Cathy. "Invigilating Our Mutual Friend: Gender and the legitimation of professional authority." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Winter 1995 (removed).

Stout, Daniel. "Nothing Personal: The Decapitation of Character in A Tale of Two Cities." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2007 (removed).

Stuchebrukhov, Olga. "Bleak House as an allegory of a middle-class nation." Dickens Quarterly, Sept, 2006 (removed).

Surridge, Lisa. Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction. Two chapters cover Dickens' attitudes towards domestic violence. Reviewed in Dickens Quarterly, Dec, 2006, by Diana C. Archibald (removed).

Thomas, Ronald R. Double exposures: Arresting images in Bleak House and The House of Seven Gables [Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne]. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 1997 (removed)

Tracy, Robert. "W. C. Macready in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" [early Victorian society's prejudice against actors]. Dickens Quarterly , Sept, 2007 (removed).

Winter, Sarah. "Curiosity as didacticism in The Old Curiosity Shop." Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2000 (removed).

Baumgarten, Murray. "Seeing Double: Jewish Isolation in Oliver Twist and Our Mutual Friend." From Between "Race" and Culture: Representations of "the Jew" in English and American Literature (removed from http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/OMF/murray.htm)

Choi, Tina Young. "Completing the Circle: The Victorian Sanitary Movement, Our Mutual Friend, and Narrative Closure." Paper from the Dickens Project Winter Conference, 1999 (removed from http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/OMF/choi.html)

Higbie, Robert. A review of Robert Higbie's Dickens and the Imagination, (UP of Florida, 1998) (removed from http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/english/19c/books/rev-0-8130-1593-6.html)

MacKay, Carol Hanbery. "Narrating Self-Creation: John Harmon's Soliloquy in Our Mutual Friend." Soliloquy in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Consciousness Creating Itself (removed from http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/OMF/mackay.html)

Teaching Materials

Background reading on the Industrial Revolution as it relates to Oliver Twist and Hard Times, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

A guide for teaching Oliver Twist, from PBS. Includes suggestions on presenting and discussing episodes of the film version and suggestions for using film to develop critical, analytical skills

"Teaching A Tale of Two Cities" Long article from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, by John L. Colle

"Familial Relationships in Great Expectations: The Search for Identity." A substantial article from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, by Anthony F. Franco

Information on Charles Dickens especially useful for teachers "Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author." From the NY Public Library. Additional background materials on Victorian art and technology from the educational collaborative Fathom

A feature page on Victorian times, from the British Broadcasting Company, contains social history and an introduction to the period (taken offline or moved)

On the challenges of teaching Our Mutual Friend to contemporary students, Professor Helena Michie and the editors of "Our Mutual Friend: The Scholarly Pages," 1998 (removed from "http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/OMF/michie.html")

Additional Reading

"The Public and Private Worlds of Charles Dickens," a summary of past articles on Dickens in The Atlantic Monthly, some dating from the 1800's, with links to the original articles. In The Atlantic Monthly Online, Apr 26, 2002 (taken offline)

Main Page | 19th-Century Novel | 19th-Century Writers | About literaryhistory.com

1998-2011