Charles Dickens

An Introduction

Price: 195.00 INR

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ISBN:

9780198835776

Publication date:

01/08/2018

Paperback

176 pages

Price: 195.00 INR

We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.

ISBN:

9780198835776

Publication date:

01/08/2018

Paperback

176 pages

Jenny Hartley

Rights:  OUP UK (Indian Territory)

Jenny Hartley

Description

"Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. His characters have such vitality that they have leapt from his pages to enjoy flourishing lives of their own: The Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Scrooge, Fagin, Mr Micawber, and many many more. His portrait has been in our pockets, on our ten-pound notes; he is a national icon, indeed himself a generator of what Englishness signifies.
In this book Jenny Hartley explores the key themes running through Dickens's corpus of works, and considers how they reflect his attitudes towards the harsh realities of nineteenth century society and its institutions, such as the workhouses and prisons. Running alonside this is Dickens's relish of the carnivalesque; if there is a prison in almost every novel, there is also a theatre. She considers Dickens's multiple lives and careers: as magazine editor for two thirds of his working life, as travel writer and journalist, and his work on behalf of social causes including ragged schools and fallen women. She also shows how his public readings enthralled the readers he wanted to reach but also helped to kill him. Finally, Hartley considers what we mean when we use the term 'Dickensian' today, and how Dickens's enduring legacy marks him out as as a novelist different in kind from others."

About the Author
Jenny Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Roehampton. She is the author of Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women (Methuen, 2008) and the editor of The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (OUP, 2012). She has also published The Reading Groups Book (2001, 2002) with OUP. She is Scholar in Residence at the Charles Dickens Museum, and President of the International Dickens Fellowship 2013-2015.

Jenny Hartley

Table of contents


1: More
2: Public and private
3: Character and plot
4: City laureate
5: Radical Dickens
6: Dickensian
Timeline
Further Reading
Index

Jenny Hartley

Features

  • Covers the life and work of Charles Dickens, with examples taken from all his major works and writing
  • Considers the key themes in Dickens's novels, and the way in which he used his writing to critique the great dehumanising structures, ideologies, and bureaucracies of nineteenth-century Britain
  • Examines the potent and multiple after-lives of Dickens's novels, and their ongoing impact today
  • Explores Dickens's own career and life, and the influence this had on his writing
  • Discusses Dickens's treatment by critics through the ages

Jenny Hartley

Review

"Jenny Hartley's Charles Dickens: An Introduction serves as a compact and effective first guide to novice readers of Dickens. Hartley successfully combines biographical and period context with short stretches of literary analysis, packed efficiently into the space of 151 pages." - Natalie B. Cole, Dickens Quarterly
"fair, entertaining and careful chronicler of Dickens's life, and an illuminating and inspiring reader of his works. For those unfamiliar with his writing, Charles Dickens: An introduction offers the best brief guide now available. For those of us who know it well, it encourages us to return to Dickens with renewed enthusiasm and an enlarged heart" - Times Literary Supplement
"A deft, authoritative, and engaging reappraisal of the great Victorian novelist." -Kirkus Reviews
"Charles Dickens: An Introduction by Roehampton University Professor Jenny Hartley is a wonderful telling of his life and accomplishments. It is voraciously researched and very accessible. . . . Hartley relays a fascinating and insightful biographical tale about an author who inspired the creation of communities of fans." -San Francisco Book Review

Jenny Hartley

Description

"Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. His characters have such vitality that they have leapt from his pages to enjoy flourishing lives of their own: The Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Scrooge, Fagin, Mr Micawber, and many many more. His portrait has been in our pockets, on our ten-pound notes; he is a national icon, indeed himself a generator of what Englishness signifies.
In this book Jenny Hartley explores the key themes running through Dickens's corpus of works, and considers how they reflect his attitudes towards the harsh realities of nineteenth century society and its institutions, such as the workhouses and prisons. Running alonside this is Dickens's relish of the carnivalesque; if there is a prison in almost every novel, there is also a theatre. She considers Dickens's multiple lives and careers: as magazine editor for two thirds of his working life, as travel writer and journalist, and his work on behalf of social causes including ragged schools and fallen women. She also shows how his public readings enthralled the readers he wanted to reach but also helped to kill him. Finally, Hartley considers what we mean when we use the term 'Dickensian' today, and how Dickens's enduring legacy marks him out as as a novelist different in kind from others."

About the Author
Jenny Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Roehampton. She is the author of Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women (Methuen, 2008) and the editor of The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (OUP, 2012). She has also published The Reading Groups Book (2001, 2002) with OUP. She is Scholar in Residence at the Charles Dickens Museum, and President of the International Dickens Fellowship 2013-2015.

Read More

Reviews

"Jenny Hartley's Charles Dickens: An Introduction serves as a compact and effective first guide to novice readers of Dickens. Hartley successfully combines biographical and period context with short stretches of literary analysis, packed efficiently into the space of 151 pages." - Natalie B. Cole, Dickens Quarterly
"fair, entertaining and careful chronicler of Dickens's life, and an illuminating and inspiring reader of his works. For those unfamiliar with his writing, Charles Dickens: An introduction offers the best brief guide now available. For those of us who know it well, it encourages us to return to Dickens with renewed enthusiasm and an enlarged heart" - Times Literary Supplement
"A deft, authoritative, and engaging reappraisal of the great Victorian novelist." -Kirkus Reviews
"Charles Dickens: An Introduction by Roehampton University Professor Jenny Hartley is a wonderful telling of his life and accomplishments. It is voraciously researched and very accessible. . . . Hartley relays a fascinating and insightful biographical tale about an author who inspired the creation of communities of fans." -San Francisco Book Review

Read More

Table of contents


1: More
2: Public and private
3: Character and plot
4: City laureate
5: Radical Dickens
6: Dickensian
Timeline
Further Reading
Index

Read More