Search results for ""Author Charles Dickens"

Examines the moving image in relation to nineteenth-century literature, theories of mind, and visual media This book examines how the productive interplay between nineteenth-century literary and visual media paralleled the emergence of a modern psychological understanding of the ways in which reading, viewing and dreaming generate moving images in the mind. Reading between these parallel histories of mind and media reveals a dynamic conceptual, aesthetic and technological engagement with the moving image that, in turn, produces a new understanding of the production and circulation of the work of key nineteenth-century writers, such as Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. As Helen Groth shows, this engagement is both typical of the nineteenth-century in its preoccupation with questions of automatism and volition (unconscious and conscious thought), spirit and materiality, art and machine, but also definitively modern in its secular articulation of the instructive and entertaining applications of making images move both inside and outside the mind. Key Features *Considers the impact of the dramatic transformations in print and visual culture on our understanding of the production, circulation and mediation of works by Byron, Scott, Thackeray, Carroll, Dickens, Mayhew and James, as well as lesser-known writers such as Ann and Jane Taylor, Pierce Egan, Countess Blessington, and George Sims *Provides a new perspective on the conventional opposition of the early cinema of attractions to the immersive absorption of both nineteenth-century literary formations and later classical narrative cinema

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"He was a man of fair learning, and more than average accomplishment; not at all intolerant of opinions at issue with his own; in religion a Dissenter of the class still prevalent in New England: in his tastes scholarly and refined, not ill read in general literature, prone to social enjoyments, a reasonably good critic of what he saw, altogether an excellent example of the class of men out of whom the fathers and founders of that great republic sprang..."-Charles Dickens, in summing up the character of Samuel CurwenThis unabridged two-volume edition of Samuel Curwen's journal supersedes the only version previously available to historians: a fragmentary and inaccurate mid-nineteenth-century work published by George Atkinson Ward, which nevertheless was celebrated by Charles Dickens.Andrew Oliver, combining painstaking documentation with an abundance of illustrations, provides a colorful, complete work which ranks as a valuable source of English social history from 1775 to 1784. It was during these years that Curwen, a Salem merchant, after fleeing from the harassment incurred by his loyalist activities, migrated to England and kept this journal. A man small in size, physically timid, mentally brave, and remarkably injudicious, Curwen felt that he was "unhappily though unjustly ranked" as a tory. Thus his observations and thoughts are useful in understanding the attitudes and experiences of the loyalist exiles.Set primarily in England and sparked throughout with engaging reports on personalities, places, and even the weather, the journal traces Curwen's nine years of exile. It also briefly details his departure from Salem, his short and alarming sojourn in Philadelphia where he found the political climate no less unfavorable, and his subsequent sea voyage to England.The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist is the first in a series of Loyalist Papers, a long-term program to be undertaken independently by a number of publishers in Britain, Canada, and the United States. The program will locate, gather, and make available documents that place in perspective those Americans who, at the time of the Revolution, remained loyal to the Crown.

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Round About the Christmas Tree is the perfect Christmas gift for booklovers, as all facets of the festive season are represented here in one gorgeous volume. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition is introduced by Ned Halley and features the classic, charming illustrations of Alice Ercle Hunt.This anthology reveals the inspiration Christmas gives so many writers, whether as a time for celebration, for family, or as a chance to remember those in hardship. There are heart-warming stories from Charles Dickens and E. Nesbit, comic fun from G. K. Chesterton and Saki, touching whimsy from Hans Christian Andersen, and even crimes to solve from Arthur Conan Doyle.

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The articles collected in George Orwell's Essays illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who elevated political writing to an art. This outstanding collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes 'My Country Right or Left', 'Decline of the English Murder', 'Shooting an Elephant' and 'A Hanging'. With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell's essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move and entertain.This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Bernard Crick.

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In The Victorian Novel of Adulthood, Rebecca Rainof confronts the conventional deference accorded the bildungsroman as the ultimate plot model and quintessential expression of Victorian nation building. The novel of maturity, she contends, is no less important to our understanding of narrative, Victorian culture, and the possibilities of fiction. Reading works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry James, John Henry Newman, and Virginia Woolf, Rainof exposes the little-discussed theological underpinnings of plot and situates the novel of maturity in intellectual and religious history, notably the Oxford Movement. Purgatory, a subject hotly debated in the period, becomes a guiding metaphor for midlife adventure in secular fiction. Rainof discusses theological models of gradual maturation, thus directing readers’ attention away from evolutionary theory and geology, and offers a new historical framework for understanding Victorian interest in slow and deliberate change.

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Dogs throughout history have enjoyed a special relationship with humankind, and our favourite four-legged creatures continue to grow in popularity. The writers and poets collected within this anthology reflect on the joys and pitfalls of dog ownership with brilliant wit, insight, and affection. From Roald Amundsen’s account of using and eating sled dogs in his expedition to the South Pole, to J.R. Ackerley’s tender portrayal of his ill-behaved dog Tulip, ON DOGS traces the canine’s journey from working animal to pampered pet. With a humorous introduction by Tracey Ullman (an inveterate adopter of strays), and 6 characterful dog portraits by animal photographer Rhian ap Gruffydd and a cover image by Picasso of his dog Lump. Contributors include Alice Walker, Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Miranda Hart, Brigitte Bardot, A.A. Gill, David Sedaris, Barbara Woodhouse, and many more.

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Feeling confident about the Grade 9-1 GCSE English Literature exams? Put your knowledge of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to the test with CGP’s brilliant Revision Question Cards! There are 63 cards in the pack covering the key characters, themes, context, writer's techniques, plot and key events. There's also a section of cards focussing on key quotes in the text - great for helping to learn quotes in preparation for the exam. Each card starts off with quick questions to warm you up, followed by harder questions that require more thought, plus revision and exam tips. Flip the card over and you’ll find full answers to each question, carefully written to help you understand everything you need to know. Don't miss CGP's matching A Christmas Carol Text Guide (9781782943099) and Text Guide Workbook (9781782947806).

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Close friendships are a heart-warming feature of many of our best-loved works of fiction. From Jane Eyre and Helen Burns’ poignant schoolgirl relationship to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi, fictional friends have supported, guided, comforted, nursed and at times betrayed the heroes and heroines of our popular and influential plays and novels. This book explores twenty-four literary friendships and, together with character studies and publication history, describes how each key relationship influences character, determines plot, promotes or disguises romance, preserves a reputation, sometimes results in betrayal, or underlines the theme of each literary work. It shows how authors from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante have by turns celebrated, lamented or transformed friendships throughout the ages, and how some friends – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Holmes and Watson or even Bridget Jones and pals – have taken on creative lives beyond the bounds of their original narrative. Including a broad scope of literature spanning a period of 400 years from writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck and Alice Walker, this book is the ideal gift for your literature-loving friend.

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Few actors are more eloquent, honest or entertaining about their life and their profession than Simon Callow. Being an Actor traces his stage journey from the letter he wrote to Laurence Olivier that led him to his first job, to his triumph as Mozart in the original production of Amadeus. This new edition continues to tell the story of his past two decades onstage. Callow discusses his occasionally ambivalent yet always passionate feelings about both film and theatre, conflicting sentiments partially resolved by his acclaimed return to the stage with his solo performances in The Importance of Being Oscar and The Mystery of Charles Dickens, seen in the West End and on Broadway in 2002. Being an Actor is a guide not only to the profession but also to the intricacies of the art, told with wit, candour, and irrepressible verve by one if the great figures of the stage.

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A delicious literary anthology all about food. With extracts from over 200 authors, it embraces fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and even a smattering of recipes, with one piquant extract for every night of the year.This absorbing book is a literary feast for every food lover. Within these pages, you'll discover a wealth of foodie extracts from around the world and throughout the centuries, from Christmas feasts in Tudor times to Nigella Lawson on how much cheese to buy for a dinner party. In addition to renowned food writers such as Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey and Anthony Bourdain, it includes literary greats like Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maya Angelou, and some intriguing curiosities such as the surreal recipes in 1932’s Futurist Cookbook. And, of course, Mrs Beeton makes an appearance. Also on the menu are:• Tantalizing gingerbread in Jane Austen's Emma.• The joys of Caribbean cooking in Sam Selvon’s The Housing Lark.• Ingenious wartime solutions in MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf and much, much more.Keep this delectable book by your bedside and savour a whole world of delicious food writing every night of the year – and it also makes the perfect gift for the foodie in your life!

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A compact biography of one of nineteenth-century England’s most renowned illustrators. George Cruikshank (1792–1878) was a key transitional figure in the changing world of nineteenth-century London’s graphic humor. He carried his eighteenth-century-trained wit from the field of political satire during the Regency years into the Victorian era of journals and books. His witty drawings of boisterous London streets in 1820–1836 made him a household name, and in 1836, his masterful etchings were key to the positive reception of Charles Dickens’s first novel. Illustrated throughout by his one-of-a-kind drawings, “The Great George” traces Cruikshank’s career from his ascent, by 1820, as the preeminent political satirist to the end of his career. During the 1840s and 50s, with the rising popularity of Dickens, the arrival of Punch, and his adoption of the temperance movement as his work’s focus, Cruikshank was eventually eclipsed by new generations of artists. Using as her launchpad the argument that drawing with humor takes both great draftsmanship and a highly perceptive sense of humanity, Josephine Lea Iselin not only details the trajectory of Cruikshank’s art but also provides valuable context for his work, placing his drawings alongside pieces from his artistic predecessors and principal contemporaries.

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What is a hangover? How does it feel to suffer from one? What can hangovers tell us about the way attitudes to alcohol have developed over time? In the humanities, why have we neglected the subject of the hangover in our critical discussions of alcohol and intoxication?In the first comprehensive study of the hangover in literature and culture, Jonathon Shears sets out to answer each of these questions by exploring the representation of ‘the morning after’ in a wide variety of texts ranging from the Renaissance to the present day. The book looks at what examples of ‘hangover literature’ from writers such as Ben Jonson, Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, Kingsley Amis and A.L. Kennedy can add to our personal and cultural understanding of alcohol use. It demonstrates that, more than just a cluster of physical symptoms, the hangover is a complex interplay of sensations and emotions with a fascinating cultural history.

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Step aside cat ladies, it’s time to put the men in the spotlight – when it comes to the felines in our lives, men are just as OBSESSED as women. Celebrating the unique bond between cat and dad, this cute little book is an ode to all cat dads out there and a guide on being the best cat parent possible. It might take a little while for their hearts to be won over, but men, eventually, always fall for their cats. With chapters covering everything from cat–dad psychology to fathering quizzes and from a toolkit of parenting essentials to basic behaviour interpretation, this is the perfect gift for the man in your cat’s life. Peppered throughout are feline-inspired quotes from famous cat dads, including Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway, and advice to help to ensure your cat is happy, healthy so you can really be the perfect Cat Father.

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Why did dustmen exercise an extended hold over the imagination of many Regency and Victorian artists and writers, including George Cruikshank, Henry Mayhew, Charles Dickens as well as numerous little known dramatists, caricaturists, print makers, journalists and novelists? This book, the first study of the cultural representation of the dust trade, provides many varied answers to this question by showing the ways in which London dustmen were associated with ideas of contamination, dirt, noise, violence, wealth, consumerism and threat. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, including plays, novels, reportage and, especially, visual culture, Dusty Bob describes the ways in which dustmen were perceived and mythologised in the first seventy years of the nineteenth century.Although Dusty Bob centrally comprises a detailed and original piece of research of interest to scholars and advanced students of Victorian culture, it has been written with a broader readership in mind.

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*A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* ‘Carefully observed, rich in detail, imaginative, compassionate and angry. A raw, unexpected portrait of Britain’s grandeur, wealth, energy, cruelty and hypocrisy in the age of liberalism’ RORY STEWART 'A shocking story of prejudice and injustice, told in meticulous detail' KEIR STARMER From award-winning historian and Sunday Times bestselling author Chris Bryant MP, James and John tells the story of what it meant to be gay in early 19th-century Britain through the lens of a landmark trial. They had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. When Charles Dickens wrote these tragic lines he was penning fact, not fiction. He had visited the condemned cells at the infamous prison at Newgate, where seventeen men who had been sentenced to death were awaiting news of their pleas for mercy. Two men stood out: James Pratt and John Smith, who had been convicted of homosexuality. Theirs was ‘an unnatural offence’, a crime so unmentionable it was never named. That was why they alone despaired and, as the turnkey told Dickens, why they alone were ‘dead men’. The 1830s ushered in great change in Britain. In a few short years the government swept away slavery, rotten boroughs, child labour, bribery and corruption in elections, the ban on trades unions and civil marriage. They also curtailed the ‘bloody code’ that treated 200 petty crimes as capital offences. Some thought the death penalty itself was wrong. There had not been a hanging at Newgate for two years; hundreds were reprieved. Yet when the King met with his ‘hanging’ Cabinet, they decided to reprieve all bar James and John. When the two men were led to the gallows, the crowd hissed and shouted. In this masterful work of history, Chris Bryant delves deep into the public archives, scouring poor law records, workhouse registers, prisoner calendars and private correspondence to recreate the lives of two men whose names are known to history – but whose story has been lost, until now.

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Here is a uniquely welcome gift for all who treasure the idea of an old-fashioned Christmas. Take a Victorian-inspired journey through the holiday as it was celebrated a century and more ago, beginning in the cold snows of early December and ending with the departure of guests on Christmas night. The book tells of games, gifts, decorations, superstitions, beliefs, fashions, foods, and fun, all presented in illustrated bursts of history combined with the thoughts and poetry of the Victorians themselves. A visual treat, richly peppered with vintage trade cards, greeting cards, photographs, and artwork from period magazines for a scrapbook-like kaleidoscope of colors and impressions, this is Christmas history at its best and most playful. As Charles Dickens wrote, "it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas." A value guide to the items shown makes this book a valuable resource as well, offering guidance for new and seasoned collectors alike.

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With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. With Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens' working title for the novel, Nobody's Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens' childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor's prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel's range of characters - the honest, the crooked, the selfish and the self-denying - offers a portrait of society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts. Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens' finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it ‘a masterpiece among masterpices’, a vedict shared by the novel's many admirers.

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Written in nine chapters separated into three blocks, Narcís Oller’s The Madness is one of the first literary pieces of work to aim to truly analyze the social and genetic causes and results of mental illness. Told through the eyes of an anonymous “narrator” character, The Madness tells the story of a young revolutionary called Daniel Serrallonga and his gradual deterioration into madness and delusion. Set against the backdrop of the political crisis that ripped Spain apart in the mid to late 19th century and laid the foundations of the Spanish Civil War, The Madness is a fascinating study of mental health within both rural and urban Catalan society. As relevant and entertaining now as it was when it was first published, this lively translation brings this fantastic piece of literature to new, modern audiences while drawing parallels with some of the 19th century’s greatest English language writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

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Decked out in Christmas garb, set against evocative backgrounds—from Charles Dickens’s London to the ice floes of Antarctica—an adorable dog strikes a pose. The scenes aren’t always ornate: Peter Thorpe’s first dog Christmas shoot involved his dog, a pair of antlers and a red nose. From Rudolph in 1990 to Santa in 2015, his dogs, donned in festive costumes, have adorned cards every December. In Bark! The Herald Angels Sing, the photographs—and outtakes—include Paddy as a tree-topper and Raggles dressed as Ebenezer Scrooge. Thorpe made his own sets and props, and used no digital retouching. Describing his inspiration for each card, with humour he suggests how readers might attempt to capture the scenes with their pups.

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Of all the great British bands to emerge from the 1960s, none had a stronger sense of place than the Kinks. Often described as the archetypal English band, they were above all a quintessentially working-class band with a deep attachment to London. Mark Doyle examines the relationship between the Kinks and their city, from their early songs of teenage rebellion to their album-length works of social criticism. He finds fascinating and sometimes surprising connections with figures as diverse as Edmund Burke, John Clare and Charles Dickens. More than just a book about the Kinks, this is a book about a social class undergoing a series of profound changes, and about a group of young men who found a way to describe, lament and occasionally even celebrate those changes through song.

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Exam Board: AQA Level: GCSE Grade 9-1 Subject: English Literature Suitable for the 2023 exams Everything you need to revise for your GCSE 9-1 set text in a snap guide Our A Christmas Carol Snap Revision Text Guide has everything you need to score top marks on your GCSE Grade 9-1 English Literature exam right at your fingertips! Revise A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in a snap with this handy guide. Refresh your knowledge of the plot, context, characters and themes Pick up top tips to ace your AQA exam Plenty of practice questions included in every section Packed with every quote and extract you need Examples of how to plan and write your essay responses QR codes link directly to online videos providing further analysis of the text

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'What dark history is this?' This is the question that hangs over Dickens's brooding novel of mayhem and murder in the eighteenth century. Set in London at the time of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, Barnaby Rudge tells a story of individuals caught up in the mindless violence of the mob. Lord George Gordon's dangerous appeal to old religious prejudices is interwoven with the murder mystery surrounding the father of the simple-minded Barnaby. The discovery of the murderer and his involvement in the riots put Barnaby's life in jeopardy. Culminating in the terrifying destruction of Newgate prison by the rampaging hordes, the descriptions of the riots are among Dickens's most powerful. Written at a time of social unrest in Victorian Britain, Barnaby Rudge explores the relationship between repression and liberation in private and public life. It looks forward to the dark complexities of Dickens's later novels, whose characters also seek refuge from a chaotic and unstable world. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is a story of romance, scandal and intrigue within the confines of a watchful, gossiping English village during the early nineteenth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Pam Morris.When seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson's widowed father remarries, her life is turned upside down by the arrival of her vain, manipulative stepfather. She also acquires an intriguing new stepsister, Cynthia, glamorous, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. The two girls begin to confide in one another and Molly soon finds herself a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs - but in doing so risks losing both her own reputation and the man she secretly loves. Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel - considered to be her finest - demonstrates an intelligent and compassionate understanding of human relationships, and offers a witty, ironic critique of mid-Victorian society.This text is based on the 1866 Cornhill Magazine version of the novel. It also includes notes on textual variants between this edition and the original manuscript, a note on the story's ending and an introduction discussing the novel's challenging investigation of themes of Englishness, Darwinism and masculine authority.Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, winning the attention of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was published in his journals, including Cranford (1853), serialised in Dickens's Household Words. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, whose biography she wrote.If you enjoyed Wives and Daughters, you might like Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, also available in Penguin Classics.'No nineteenth-century novel contains a more devastating rejection than this of the Victorian male assumption of moral authority'Pam Morris

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Hard Times by Charles Dickens'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else'Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and 'bully of humility' Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimised weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognise the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in the English language, from the eighteenth century and the first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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Ada, condesa de Lovelace (1815-1852), fue hija del poeta romántico Lord Byron y su esposa, Anna Isabella. A pesar de ser una actividad inusual para las jóvenes de la época, estudió ciencias y matemáticas desde muy pronto y habitualmente se la considera la primera programadora informática del mundo, por lo que se ha convertido en un icono para las mujeres en el ámbito de la tecnología. Este libro utiliza material de archivo inédito para explorar su infancia precoz, desde sus ideas sobre un caballo volador a vapor hasta preguntas penetrantes sobre la naturaleza de los arcoíris. Persona muy activa en la élite social y científica del Londres victoriano junto con Mary Somerville, Michael Faraday y Charles Dickens, Ada Lovelace quedó fascinada con las máquinas informáticas ideadas por Charles Babbage y desarrolló una tabla de fórmulas matemáticas que se ha llegado a considerar el primer programa informático. Este libro muestra cómo nuestra protagonista, con una asombrosa clarividencia, explo

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A beautifully illustrated retelling of the festive favourite, Disney The Muppet Christmas Carol!Christmas is a season of peace, joy and love - but not for Ebenezer Scrooge. The meanest, greediest man in London, Scrooge hates Christmas. But everything changes one snowy Christmas Eve when Scrooge receives a ghostly visit. Over the course of that one magical night, Scrooge will come face-to-face with his past, present and future as three spirits - and a whole lot of Muppets - arrive to show him the error of his ways.Narrated by the Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens - with a little help from Rizzo the Rat - this illustrated storybook stars Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy as Mrs. Cratchit and the entire Muppets cast, as they help Scrooge change his fate, open his heart and discover the true meaning of Christmas.

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Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens’ London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colours. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians’ perception of colour and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life. Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians’ new attitudes to colour through a multi-disciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key ‘chromatic’ moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colours of the past, the sumptuous colours of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colours that defined the end of the century.

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'A revelation ... as well as being sympathetic to the plight of children, it is hilarious' A. N. WilsonThe hero of Dickens's flamboyantly exuberant novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is left penniless after his father's death and forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures give Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall; the tragic orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummle and their daughter, the 'infant phenomenon'. Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by Dickens's outrage at social injustice, but it also reveals his comic genius at its most unerring.Edited with an Introduction by Mark Ford

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This book presents vintage, often whimsical, and one-of-a-kind wooden figurine carvings by ANRI, the world-renowned company founded in 1912 in the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy. Among the more than 2,500 carvings featured are bottle stoppers, bottle openers and corkscrews, bar sets, calendars, letter openers, bookends, humidors, ashtrays, lighters, cigarette boxes, pipe rests, salt and pepper sets, pepper mills, napkin rings, timers, toothpick holders, brushes, salt and serving spoons, spoon and key racks, door knockers, and figurines, including monks and characters from novels by Charles Dickens. Collectors with a wide range of interests will be delighted with the amazing number of woodcarvings shown. This book will amuse and inspire today’s woodcarvers and collectors, novices and experienced devotees alike.

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Thames aficionado Robert Gibbings once wrote that ‘the quiet of an age-old river is like the slow turning of the pages of a well-loved book’. Writing the Thames tells a much-loved river’s story through the remarkable prose, poetry and illustration that it has inspired. In eight themed chapters it features historical events such as Julius Caesar’s crossing in 55 BCE and Elizabeth I’s stand against the Spanish at Tilbury, explorations of topographers who mapped, drew and painted the river and the many congenial riverside retreats for authors ranging from Francis Bacon, Thomas More and Alexander Pope to Thomas Love Peacock, William Morris and Henry James. A chapter on messing about in boats tells the story of William Hogarth’s impulsive five-day river trip with four inebriated friends and features satirical novels making fun of frenetic rowers (Zuleika Dobson) and young London men-about-town on camping holidays (Three Men in a Boat). The river has also inspired some of the best children’s literature (The Wind in the Willows) and naturalists such as Richard Jeffries and C.J. Cornish (A Naturalist on the Thames) have recorded the richness of its wildlife. But there are also dark undercurrents: Charles Dickens’s use of its waters as a symbol of death, Sax Rohmer’s Limehouse villain Dr Fu Manchu, and the many fictional criminals who dispose of corpses in its sinister depths in detective novels ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Morse. Beautifully illustrated, this book celebrates the writers who have helped to make England’s greatest river an enduring legend.

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Introduction and Notes by Dr Ella Westland, University of Exeter. Illustrations by George Cruickshank. Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes - grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. Oliver Twist features some of the author's most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sikes, Nancy and 'the Artful Dodger'. For any reader wishing to delve into the works of the great Victorian literary colossus, Oliver Twist is, without doubt, an essential title.

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'Handsomely produced . . . All in all, a quite absorbing collection, an easy Christmas present, and a perfect (if bulky) loo-side read.'Jeremy NicholasA wonderful selection of writing on dogs, from Plato to Virginia Woolf, and from ancient Egypt to twentieth-century New YorkFrom beautiful lyrics to madcap waggery, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's adored lap-dog Flush to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's terrifying Hound of the Baskervilles, and encompassing odes, fables, stories, songs, nursery rhymes and more, Mark Bryant has compiled a wonderfully evocative collection of writing on all kinds of dogs by all kinds of authors. Included are poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Robert Burns and more; humorous pieces by Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Ambrose Bierce and Jerome K. Jerome; and other delights from writers as varied as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain, the Brothers Grimm, Edith Wharton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Louisa M. Alcott, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Mansfield, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Eliot and Jack London, amongst others. Covering every genre, from humour and fantasy to romance and horror, and drawn from every part of the world, these stories, poems and excerpts from essays, letters, diaries and journals provide a collection to delight any dog-lover.

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The beginning is both internal and external to the text it initiates, and that noncoincidence points to the text’s vexed relation with its outside. Hence the nontrivial self-reflexivity of any textual beginning, which must bear witness to the self-grounding quality of the literary work— its inability either to comprise its inception or to externalize it in an authorizing exteriority. In a different but related way, the fact that they must begin renders our lives and our desires opaque to us; what Freud called “latency” marks not only sexuality but human thought with a self-division shaped by asynchronicity. From Henry James’s New York Edition prefaces to George Eliot’s epigraphs, from Ovid’s play with meter to Charles Dickens’s thematizing of the ex nihilo emergence of character, from Wallace Stevens’s abstract consideration of poetic origins to James Baldwin’s, Carson McCullers’s, and Eudora Welty’s descriptions of queer childhood, writers repeatedly confront the problem of inception. Inception introduces a fundamental contingency into texts and psyches alike: in the beginning, all could have been otherwise. For Kevin Ohi, the act of inception, and the potential it embodies, enables us to see making and unmaking coincide within the mechanism of creation. In this sense, Inceptions traces an ethics of reading, the possibility of perceiving, in the ostensibly finished forms of lives and texts, the potentiality inherent in their having started forth.

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A dazzling Dickensian thriller set in a Victorian underworld inspired by Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.It's the Christmas season, and Tiny Tim is now grown up. No longer the pious child the world thought he was, he has just buried his father and is struggling to shed his financial ties to his benevolent 'Uncle' Ebenezer by losing himself in London's dark underbelly. He spends his nights dredging the Thames for dead bodies and the treasures contained in their pockets.One day he comes across a girl's body, branded with a mysterious 'G'. Then he finds another girl with a similar brand - but she is still alive. Determined to protect Philomela and get to the bottom of the mystery, Tim embarks on an astonishing adventure...'With its linguistic razzle-dazzle, Mr. Timothy is a mock-Victorian tour de force - a chilling shocker that touches the heart and makes it race'Wall Street Journal

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The Great Western is the least known of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s three ships, being overshadowed by the later careers of the Great Britain and the Great Eastern. However, the Great Western was the first great success, confounding the critics in becoming the fastest ship to steam continuously across the Atlantic, and began the era of luxury transatlantic liners. It was a bold venture by Brunel and his colleagues, who were testing the limits of known technology. This book examines the businessmen, the shipbuilding committee and Brunel and looks at life on board for the crew and the passengers using diaries from the United States and England. The ship’s first voyage made headline news in New York and London and involved a race with the small steamship Sirius. The Great Western’s maiden voyage was a triumph, and this wooden paddle steamer became the wonder of her age. She linked antebellum New York with the London of Charles Dickens and the youthful Queen Victoria. The ship continued to carry the rich and the famous across the Atlantic for eighteen years.

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The story Charles Dickens might have written after drinking too much gin... Follow half-orphan Pip Bin's remarkable adventures with sisters Pippa and Poppy and best friend Harry Biscuit, as they attempt to escape the scheming clutches of Mr Gently Benevolent and defeat the irrepressible Hardthrasher siblings. Can they avert disaster at every turn? Will evil be vanquished by virtue? Can love triumph over hate? Mark Evans' play Bleak Expectations is a hilarious, chaotic caper, featuring dastardly villains, preposterous names, pulse-quickening romances, heart-rending death scenes, and, of course, a happy ending. Based on the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, the play opened at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in 2022, directed by Caroline Leslie. It offers rich opportunities to amateur theatre companies looking for a gloriously daft Dickensian romp which will have their audiences joyfully transported and begging for more.

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Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable to stay still, dressed in colourful clothes, Wilkie Collins looked distinctly strange. But he was none the less a charmer, befriended by the great, loved by children, irresistibly attractive to women – and avidly read by generations of readers. Peter Ackroyd follows his hero, ‘the sweetest-tempered of all the Victorian novelists’, from his childhood as the son of a well-known artist to his struggling beginnings as a writer, his years of fame and his life-long friendship with the other great London chronicler, Charles Dickens. As well as his enduring masterpieces, The Moonstone – often called the first true detective novel – and the sensational The Woman in White, he produced an intriguing array of lesser-known works. Told with Ackroyd’s inimitable verve, this is a ravishingly entertaining life of a great storyteller, full of surprises, rich in humour and sympathetic understanding.

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Imaginary Distance' is the first book to undertake a survey of the literature produced by nineteenth-century settler emigration. It argues that the demographic shift in the nineteenth century to settler colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand was also a textual one: a vast literature supported and underpinned this movement of people. The monograph brings printed emigrants' letters, manuscript shipboard newspapers and settler fiction into conversation with each other across the first three chapters to explore the generic features of 'emigration literature': textual mobility, a sense of place, and home-making. The last two chapters demonstrate how pervasive the textual cultures of settler emigration were in shaping the nineteenth-century cultural imagination: concerns raised in emigration literature were pervasive and seeped through representations of space and place: the works of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Ford Madox Brown, amongst others, draw upon emigration to explore the networks of people and texts extending across the settler world.

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How practices from the digital analysis of texts both simplify and enhance traditional literary criticism.Honorable Mention, NAVSA Best Book of the Year by the North American Victorian Studies AssociationWhat is to be gained by reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch from an Excel spreadsheet, or the novels of Charles Dickens through a few hundred dialogue tags—those he said/she saids that bring his characters to life? Sarah Danielle Allison’s Reductive Reading argues that the greatest gift the computational analysis of texts has given to traditional criticism is not computational at all. Rather, one of the most powerful ways to generate subtle reading is to be reductive; that is, to approach literary works with specific questions and a clear roadmap of how to look for the answers. Allison examines how patterns that form little part of our conscious experience of reading nevertheless structure our experience of books. Exploring Victorian moralizing at the level of the grammatical clause, she also reveals how linguistic patterns comment on the story in the process of narrating it. Delving into The London Quarterly Review, as well as the work of Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, and other canonical Victorian writers, the book models how to study nebulous and complex stylistic effects. A manifesto for and a model of how digital analysis can provide daringly simple approaches to complex literary problems, Reductive Reading introduces a counterintuitive computational perspective to debates about the value of fiction and the ethical representation of people in literature.

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Incluso una puerta pesada no tiene necesidad más que de una pequeña llave. La frase es de Charles Dickens, pero puede aplicarse a las palabras de Anselm Grün, que son como una llave que abre algo en nuestra alma. Despejan un espacio de libertad para mí y para los demás. Vivir, sencillamente, satisfacción y claridad: he ahí un camino hacia la armonía interior que no sólo me vivifica a mí, sino también a la comunidad. Deja todas tus preocupaciones y para de dar vueltas en torno a ti mismo. Entonces el mundo entero te pertenece. Todo se convierte en un regalo. Y la vida pasa a ser un lugar para el agradecimiento.

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The Great Western is the least known of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s three ships, being overshadowed by the later careers of the Great Britain and the Great Eastern. However, the Great Westernwas the first great success, confounding the critics in becoming the fastest ship to steam continuously across the Atlantic, and began the era of luxury transatlantic liners. It was a bold venture by Brunel and his colleagues, who were testing the limits of known technology. This book examines the businessmen, the shipbuilding committee and Brunel and looks at life on board for the crew and the passengers using diaries from the United States and England. The ship’s first voyage made headline news in New York and London and involved a race with the small steamship Sirius. The Great Western’s maiden voyage was a triumph, and this wooden paddle steamer became the wonder of her age. She linked antebellum New York with the London of Charles Dickens and the youthful Queen Victoria. The ship continued to carry the rich and the famous across the Atlantic for eighteen years.

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Evangelical Gothic explores the bitter antagonism that prevailed between two defining institutions of nineteenth-century Britain: Evangelicalism and the popular novel. Christopher Herbert begins by retrieving from near oblivion a rich anti-Evangelical polemical literature in which the great religious revival, often lauded in later scholarship as a "moral revolution," is depicted as an evil conspiracy centered on the attempted dismantling of the humanitarian moral culture of the nation. Examining foundational Evangelical writings by John Wesley and William Wilberforce alongside novels by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, and others, Herbert contends that the realistic popular novel of the time was constitutionally alien to Evangelical ideology and even, to some Extent, took its opposition to that ideology as its core function. This provocative argument illuminates the frequent linkage of Evangelicalism in nineteenth-century fiction with the characteristic imagery of the Gothic–with black magic, with themes of demonic visitation and vampirism, and with a distinctive mood of hysteria and panic.

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The Masses Are Revolting reconstructs a pivotal era in the history of affect and emotion, delving into an archive of nineteenth-century disgust to show how this negative emotional response came to play an outsized, volatile part in the emergence of modern British society. Attending to the emotion's socially productive role, Zachary Samalin highlights concrete scenes of Victorian disgust, from sewer tunnels and courtrooms to operating tables and alleyways. Samalin focuses on a diverse set of nineteenth-century writers and thinkers—including Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, and Charlotte Brontë—whose works reflect on the shifting, unstable meaning of disgust across the period. Samalin elaborates this cultural history of Victorian disgust in specific domains of British society, ranging from the construction of London's sewer system, the birth of modern obscenity law, and the development of the conventions of literary realism to the emergence of urban sociology, the rise of new scientific theories of instinct, and the techniques of colonial administration developed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. By bringing to light disgust's role as a public passion, The Masses Are Revolting reveals significant new connections among these apparently disconnected forms of social control, knowledge production, and infrastructural development.

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This edition of Charles Dickens''s A Christmas Carol includes a Foreword and Biographical Note by Jane Yolen. Scrooge was a foul old man who wrapped his cold, uncaring heart in chains. Chains of greed. Bigotry. Contempt. Apathy. Selfishness. He detested the world, and was alone. Until the night his long-dead partner Marley appeared.A hideous spectre forced to walk the earth forever, Marley was damned. As Scrooge would be...unless he agrees to face three ghosts. One would take Scrooge back to the memories he''d buried. One would show Scrooge the world of joy and friendship he''d rejected. One would force Scrooge into the dreadful shadow of the future he''d forged.Three ghosts of Christmas. Of Christmas Past. Of Christmas Present. Of Christmas Yet to Come. All offering Scrooge a single gift--a chance.A last chance to give love.A last chance to join life. Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the

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Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories - stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In The Earthquake Observers, Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century's most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von. Humboldt, Charles Darwitt, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1950s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. The Earthquake Observers tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.

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Kent is often referred to as ‘the cradle of English Christianity’. Canterbury is not only home to the Anglican Communion but also the location of St Martin’s Church, the oldest church in England in continuous use. Kent’s religious heritage has benefitted from this, as has its proximity to both the Continent and London. Architecturally, the churches of Kent range from premier Norman churches to tiny manorial churches that still sit in sequestered churchyards having, apparently, been forgotten for centuries. These churches are distinguished by a greater than usual diversity of building material, from the poor-quality but distinctive Kentish ragstone or flint nodules from nearby fields to excellent-quality limestone imported from Normandy and locally produced bricks. Kent’s churches also display glimpses into national history with links to early saints like St Mildred and St Sexburga through to Archbishop Thomas Becket, Anne Boleyn, Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill. In this book author John E. Vigar examines not only examples of the great church building campaigns of the medieval period but also later churches. Many have furnishings and memorials where individuals showed their importance in society by beautifying churches to their own glory, including Lullingstone, which was brought up to date in the early eighteenth century by its rich patron, Sir Percival Hart, and examples where new money from industry influenced the county’s churches in the Victorian period, outstanding among which is Kilndown. This fascinating picture of an important part of the history of Kent over the centuries will be of interest to all those who live in or are visiting this attractive county in England.

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Paul Theroux celebra cincuenta años de viajar por el mundo y reúne lo mejor de su obra y los pasajes más memorables de aquellos autores que lo han formado como lector y viajero: Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Johnson, Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene y DH Lawrence entre otros se dan cita en estas páginas. Guía filosófica y libro de viajes a la vez, El Tao del viajero es una obra para regalar y atesorar, para leer una y otra vez, como libro de cabecera que marca el camino espiritual del viajero que todos llevamos dentro.

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This fascinating volume reveals the real men – and women – behind some of the most infamous London villains ever to appear in fiction. Fagin, Professor Moriarty, Moll Cutpurse and the notorious 'cracksman' A.J. Raffles were all rooted in the lives and deaths of a litany of real-life criminals, agitators and activists. With a special emphasis on the city that spawned them, this book brings together their stories for the first time, and shows how they were woven into fiction by some of Britain’s greatest writers, including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. Containing prison escapes, sensational trials, daring art thefts, vicious attacks, roaring boys, black magicians and private detectives, Masters of Crime explores both the real underworld of British crime history, and its fictional counter-parts. It will delight fans of true crime and crime fiction alike.

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