貧苦の生い立ちから弱者には温かな眼差しを向ける一方、ユーモアとペーソスを交えながら社会の不正と矛盾を批判し、人間味溢れる数々のキャラクターを生み出した英国の国民的文豪、チャールズ・ディケンズ（1812-70年）に着目します。独特の作風で作家としての地位を確立した後も、雑誌の編集者、紀行作家、新聞記者、慈善事業・社会活動家といった顔を持ち、講演や自作の公開朗読を行うなど精力的に活動しました。その作品に貫かれているテーマとは？ ディケンズの「らしさ」を探り、その遺産について考察します。(cf. Oliver Twist (Oxford World's Classics); A Tale of Two Cities (Oxford World's Classics) ほか）
  

• 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
• Originally published in hardback as Charles Dickens: An Introduction

  
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 Very Short Introduction 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 alongside 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.