Paroissien, D. (ed.), A Companion to Charles Dickens (Blackwell-Wiley, 2008, pbk 2011). 536 pp. ISBN: 978-0-470-65794-2 (pbk).
Blackwell’s Companion to Charles Dickens was first published in 2008, and has now appeared in paperback and as an e-book. The Companion puts Dickens’s work into its literary, historical, and social contexts, and traces the development of Dickens’s career as a journalist and novelist. There are also original essays by leading Dickensian scholars on each of Dickens’s fifteen novels. The contributors explore a broad range of topics, including criticisms of his novels, the use of history and law in his fiction, language, and the effect of political and social reform. They examine Dickens’s legacy and survey the mass of secondary materials that has been generated in response and reverence to his writing.
Read more about the book on the Wiley-Blackwell website.
David Paroissien is Professorial Research Fellow in English Literature at Buckingham, co-director of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Dickens Journals Online research project 2011–2012, and member of the DJO’s Editorial Advisory Board. As well as editing the book, he contributed a chapter: “‘Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens’: The epistolary art of the inimitable”. There are also chapters by Dr John Drew (“Dickens’s evolution as a journalist”), and another member of the DJO Editorial Advisory Board, Dr Leon Litvack (“Our Mutual Friend“).
