no.57- 58
11
Palgrave Advances in Charles Dickens
Studies
Robert L. Patten and John Bowen
Pre-publication endorsements 'Bob Patten
and John Bowen's collection is a state-of-the art
guide to Dickens studies. The editors have assem
bled a distinguished team of contributors, who
clearly and succinctly set forth illuminating per
spectives on crucial issues of modern scholarship.
Wide-ranging, detailed, and remarkably coherent,
it is the best single volume of essays since George
Ford and Lauriat Lane's classic The Dickens Critics
first appeared nearly half a century ago, and a
must for every serious student of Dickens.' - Paul
Schlicke, President of the International Dickens
Fellowship and Senior Lecturer in English,
University of Aberdeen, UK
Description: Palgrave Advances in Charles
Dickens Studies is a comprehensive and authorita
tive guide to the study of one of the most impor
tant Victorian novelists. Its editors, Robert L.
Patten and John Bowen, are leading authorities on
Dickens and the international team of contributors
they have assembled contains some of the most
exciting critics of nineteenth-century fiction writ
ing today. The book covers the whole range of
Dickens's writing and criticism about it, including
biographical, theoretical and historical approaches.
It is based on up-to-the-minute research and writ
ten in a lively and engaging way, and will be essen
tial reading for all students and scholars of this
canonical writer. Contents List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors Introduction; J.Bowen
R.L.Patten Publishing in Parts; R.L.Patten?Dickens
and the Writing of a Life;
R.Bodenheimer?Performing Character; M.Andrews
Dickens and Plot; H.M.Schor Visualizing Dickens;
J.Sutherland?From Blood to Law: the
Embarrassments of Family in Dickens; H.Michie
Reforming Culture; C.Waters Dickens's Reading
Public; D.Vincent Politicized Dickens: The
Journalism of the 1850s; J.Childers
Psychoanalyzing Dickens; C.Dever Historicising
Dickens; C.Robson Dickens and the Force of
Writing; J.Bowen Timeline; I.Wilkinson
Bibliography Index
Author Biographies ROBERT L. PATTEN is
Autrey Professor in Humanities in the Department
of English at Rice University, USA. He is editor of
SEL, has written Dickens and His Publishers, an
award-winning two-volume biography of the
graphic artist George Cruickshank, and articles on
the many Victorian writers and artists. He is cur
rently completing a book entitled Dickens and the
Industrial Strength.
Author. JOHN BOWEN is Professor of
Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of
York, UK. He is the author of Other Dickens:
Pickwick to Chuzzlewit and has edited Dickens's
Barnaby Rudge for Penguin. He is a member of
faculty at the University of California Dickens
Project and a Fellow of the English Association.
The Pride of Mankind
'The Pride of Mankind' (2006), the second book
published by the Hedge Sparrow Press, will be of
special interest to readers, students and collectors
of the works of Charles Dickens.
The text consists of a series of 10 advertisement
poems for Robert Warren's boot blacking printed
between March 13 and May 14 1832 in a radical
evening newspaper: The True Sun. Charles Dickens
had worked as a child for Robert Warren's brother
and rival Jonathan at his factory on the Strand,
and was a young reporter on The True Sun, also on
the Strand, when these advertisements appeared.
There is compelling evidence, fully and clearly pre
sented in John Drew's introduction, that at least
one of the poems, 'The Turtle Dove', was penned
by Dickens, and is his first identifiable publication.
Two others show a marked stylistic similarity. The
poem contains the slogan for Warren's product,
"the pride of mankind", which has been taken as a
title for the sequence.
The book is of interest in the context of advertis
ing history as well as for its Dickensian associa
tions. It was customary for authors, established or
impecunious and aspiring like the young Dickens,
to earn a little extra cash from "puff verses" of this
kind. Typically they display witty versification and
a tone of ironic hyperbole. The latent humour is
brought out in the engravings by Bob Guy - each
poem having a main illustration and a reflective
tailpiece in the manner of Bewick.
John Drew
John Drew is a Senior Lecturer in English
Literature at the University of Buckingham. His
research has concentrated on Dickens's non-fic
tional writings on which he is an acknowledged
authority. He co-edited with Michael Slater volume
4 of the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens'
Journalism (2000) and is author of Dickens the
Journalist, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
