The fifth volume continues the tradition of this distinguished series to explore Dickens and the Victorian period through the widest possible range of investigation, presenting a judicious blend of the new and the traditional in British and American scholarship and criticism. Volume 5 contains nine essays analyzing the significance of Dickens’ Gothic and hero motifs, guilt-complex and mirror-image themes, knowledge of the circus and stage, and theory of fiction. The Dickens scholar and student will find here an unusually wide and rich range of scholarship and thought concerned not only with Dickens’ work but also with the place of personal life in his writings.
Robert B. Partlow, Jr., is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is Secretary-Treasurer of The Dickens Society.