Charles Dickens An introduction

The author of this interesting, compact introduction to Dickens has impeccable credentials that shine through its pages. In six chapters, Hartley (Univ. of Roehampton, UK) first engages readers in Dickens's early style by analyzing a scene in David Copperfield and addressing the writer's social realism, bifocalism, and cinematic imagination. She goes on to survey Dickens's biography, the role of prisons, and the significance of his "second wife"; the relationship between character and plot; Dickens's ambivalent immersion in London as a kind of "magic lantern" (his flaneurial detachment turns the city's streets into material for the ethnologist, anthropologist, and dramatist); "radical Dickens," a friend of the poor who attacked Victorian institutions such as law and religion and even the language of materialism (famously, Dickens labeled Parliament a "dust yard" and transformed the Courts of Chancery into the Circumlocution Office); and the ramifications of the label Dickensian, which go beyond Scrooge's terrified redemption. Dickens's novels retain their moral quality and perpetuate a sense of the home and domestic bliss. Somehow exceeding realism, Dickens's analyses and hyperbole continue to earn readers' affection and loyalty. The volume includes a useful time line and a guide to further reading. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Sandra Ann Parker, Hiram College

Restless, tireless, and prolific, Dickens became an adjective in his own lifetime.As part of Oxfords informative Introduction series, Hartley (English/Univ. of Roehampton; Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, 2008, etc.), scholar in residence at the Charles Dickens Museum, offers a brisk, acutely perceptive overview of the British writers life, work, and legacy. Her distillation of Dickens biography touches on familiar points: the lonely, poverty-stricken childhood; a brief, adolescent romance; marriage and the birth of 10 children; his affair with actress Ellen Ternan; his long career as a journalist and editor; and his catapult to fame, at the age of 24, with the serial publication ofnbsp;The Pickwick Papers. Besides creating biographical context, Hartley sharply examines the themes that engaged Dickens throughout his career, dominated by his critique of the dehumanizing structures, ideologies, and bureaucracies of nineteenth-century Britain. Because of his fame, Dickens was a sought-after speaker in support of good causes, which included sanitary reforms, the establishment of schools for poor children, and the improvement of conditions in workhouses and debtors prisons, something he recalled, darkly, from personal experience. He could be dismissive and cynical about those in power: My faith in the people governing, is on the whole, infinitesimal, he once declared. He was, said George Orwell, certainly a subversive writer, and Hartley calls him a life-long radical. She judiciously extracts passages from Dickens major writingsDavid Copperfield,nbsp;Oliver Twist,nbsp;Hard Times,nbsp;Little Dorrit, and the much-lovednbsp;A Christmas Carol,nbsp;to name a fewto exemplify the authors characterizations, plots, and style. His use of cliffhanger chapter endings, Hartley writes, was a strategy necessary in serial publication, which builds waiting and suspense into the meaning of the novel and makes them a crucial part of the reading experience. Just as the term Dickensian has entered the English language, the novels have endured in popularity throughout the decades. A deft, authoritative, and engaging reappraisal of the great Victorian novelist. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.