Charles Dickens
(Oxford University Press - Authors in Context)
"Authors in Context" examines the work of major authors in relation to their own times and to the present day. Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insight into texts in their context. Charles Dickens was both a representative Victorian and an artist who is quintessentially a "Post-Romantic". He was the most popular author of his age and the one who most vividly reflected the contradictory impulses of Victorian society, its energy and invention as much as its social and political anomalies. This book explores Dickens's interest in the urban phenomenon which so marks 19th-century culture, and it looks at the vital interconnection between his life and his art. Like his character, David Copperfield, Dickens lived his life and pursued his career "thoroughly in earnest", but he was also a great comic writer whose work resonates well beyond his own age and continues to be recontextualized on the stage, on film, and on television. This book is intended for students, from AS/A2 level upwards, and general readers.
Charles Dickens
(Penguin Lives Series)
With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.
Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work
(The Literary A to Z Series)
Charles Dickens A to Z draws upon a vast array of letters, bibliography, criticism, correspondence, reviews, and the texts themselves to portray his life and literary career. Over 2,500 extensively cross-referenced entries include:
Detailed synopses of all his major and most minor works and an overview of the critical reception to each Descriptions of all characters, both fictional and factual, and all settings within his work Dickens's family, friends, acquaintances, professional contemporaries, and critics Places important to his life and work Social issues in Victorian England 50 photographs, many of them by Dickens's contemporaries.
