Publication of the week: Professor John Drew

Drew, J., “Charles Dickens, Fiction”, in Felluga, D., Gilbert, P. & Hughes, L. (eds), Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). ISBN: 978-1-118-40538-3.

Just published in both online and print formats, the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, according to its publisher, spans the full sweep of literary genres, figures and global reach that define this influential period, blending accessibility with an unmatched breadth of coverage and authoritative scholarship. Intensively peer-reviewed at every stage of its composition, it comprises over 330 fully cross-referenced entries, covering individual authors and key topics including the novel, plays, poetry and global Victorian studies, alongside succinct articles on themes such as cosmopolitanism, journalism, race, sexuality and reading.

Professor John Drew has contributed an in-depth omnibus essay covering the writing career and the fiction of Charles Dickens. “This was a harder undertaking than it looked at first”, Professor Drew explained. “Dickens’s imaginative writings achieve their effects through elaborate amplification of ideas, through repetition, through detail. They are lavish of literary effect, and constitute well over five million words of prose. Condensing this into just over 5,000 words of factual outline and critical commentary was somewhat challenging!”

Similarly challenging is the price of the new Enyclopedia, which retails in print form at £395 for the 4 volumes. The University Library is investigating the viability of a subscription to the online edition. Meanwhile, Professor Drew notes, a pre-publication version of his essay on Dickens will be available to students and researchers to consult via the Buckingham E-Archive of Research.