Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T20:30:10.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

POPULAR DICKENS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Lisa Rodensky
Lisa Rodensky*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Why was Charles Dickens so popular when he broke onto the scene in the late 1830s? That's still a real question to ask, but so is another, related question: what did the terms “popular” and “popularity” mean when applied to this novelist at this signal moment in the development of the novel? Writing in the National Magazine and Monthly Critic: A Journal of Philosophy, Science, Literature, Music, and the Drama – a short-lived monthly designed to publish serious work on various subjects – G. H. Lewes begins his 1837 review of Dickens's Sketches by Boz, Pickwick Papers, and Oliver Twist with a paragraph that worries over the nature of popularity:

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , September 2009 , pp. 583 - 607
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Blyn-LaDrew, Roslyn. “Geoffrey Keating, William Thoms, Raymond Williams, and the Terminology of Folklore: ‘Béaloideas’ as a ‘Keyword.’” Folklore Forum 27 (1996): 5–37.Google Scholar
“Boz and His Nicholas Nickleby.” Spectator 31 Mar. 1838: 304–05.Google Scholar
“Boz's Oliver Twist.” Spectator 9 Nov. 1838: 1114–16.Google Scholar
Brake, Laurel. “Literary Criticism and the Victorian Periodicals.” Yearbook of English Studies 16 (1986): 92–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brand, John. Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions. Ed. Ellis, Henry. London: Chatto, 1900.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. “The ‘Discovery’ of Popular Culture.” People's History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Samuel, Raphael. London: Routledge, 1981. 216–26.Google Scholar
Butt, John, and Tillotson, Kathleen. Dickens at Work. Fair Lawn: Essential, 1958.Google Scholar
Chittick, Kathryn. Dickens and the 1830s. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Chittick, Kathryn. “Reviews and Reviewing.” Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Ed. Schlicke, Paul. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 497–500.Google Scholar
Collins, Philip, ed. Dickens: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1986.Google Scholar
Collins, Philip. “Popularity.” Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Ed. Schlicke, Paul. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. 459–62.Google Scholar
Collins, Philip. “The Popularity of Dickens.” Dickensian 70 (1974): 5–20.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. The Letters of Wilkie Collins. Ed. Baker, William and Clarke, William M.. 2 vols. New York: St. Martin's, 1999.Google Scholar
Curtis, Gerard. “Dickens in the Visual Market.” Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices. Ed. Jordan, John O. and Patten, Robert L.. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 213–49.Google Scholar
Dentith, Simon. “How Popular was Dombey and Son?” Dickensian 88 (1992): 69–81.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. 1841. Ed. Spence, Gordon. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.Google Scholar
Ferris, Ina. The Achievement of Literary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ford, George H. Dickens and His Readers: Aspects of Novel-Criticism since 1836. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1955.Google Scholar
Forster, John. “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.” Examiner 27 Oct. 1839: 677–78.Google Scholar
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. 1872–74. 2 vols. London: Chapman, 1904.Google Scholar
Fyfe, Aileen. Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garside, Peter. “Walter Scott and the ‘Common’ Novel, 1808–1819.” Cardiff Corvey 3 (1999). <http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/corvey/articles/cc03_n02.html>. Web. 11 July 2006..+Web.+11+July+2006.>Google Scholar
Goldberg, Michael. “From Bentham to Carlyle: Dickens's Political Development.” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gummere, Francis Barton. The Popular Ballad. Boston: Houghton, 1907.Google Scholar
Hack, Daniel. The Material Interests of the Victorian Novel. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2005.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular.’” People's History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Samuel, Raphael. London: Routledge, 1981. 227–40.Google Scholar
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. 1891. Ed. Elledge, Scott. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1991.Google Scholar
Harling, Philip. “Hayward, Abraham (1801–1884).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/>. Web. 19 January 2007..+Web.+19+January+2007.>Google Scholar
Haywood, Ian. The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics, and the People, 1790–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.Google Scholar
James, Henry. Complete Stories, 1892–1898. New York: Library of America, 1996.Google Scholar
John, Juliet. Dickens's Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Samuel. Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection. 1755. Ed. McAdam, E. L. Jr. and Milne, George. New York: Pantheon, 1963.Google Scholar
Ledger, Sally. Dickens and the Popular Radical Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Lewes, G. H. “Dickens in Relation to Criticism.” Fortnightly Review ns 11 (1872): 141–54.Google Scholar
Lewes, G. H.. “Review of Books.” National Magazine Dec. 1837: 445–49.Google Scholar
Magnet, Myron. Dickens and the Social Order. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1985.Google Scholar
Maidment, B. E. “Hardy's Fiction and English Traditional Music.” Thomas Hardy Annual 4 (1986): 3–18.Google Scholar
Masson, David. “Publisher's Circulars and Literary Advertisements for 1854.” British Quarterly Review 21 (1855): 157–81.Google Scholar
“Master Humphrey's Clock”. Metropolitan Magazine June 1840: 51–52.Google Scholar
Mays, Kelly J. “The Disease of Reading and Victorian Periodicals.” Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices. Ed. Jordan, John O. and Patten, Robert L.. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 165–94.Google Scholar
McCalman, Iain. “Controlling the Riots: Dickens, Barnaby Rudge and Romantic Revolution.” History 84 (1999): 458–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Page, Norman, ed. Wilkie Collins: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1974.Google Scholar
Patten, Robert L.Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.Google Scholar
Peyrouton, N. C. “Dickens and the Chartists.” Dickensian 60 (1964): 78–88, 152–61.Google Scholar
“Popular Literature of the Day.” British and Foreign Review 10 (1840): 223–46.Google Scholar
“The Popular Novel.” Quarterly Review 194 (1901): 244–73.Google Scholar
“The Popular Novels of the Year.” Fraser's Magazine 68 (1863): 253–69.Google Scholar
Rodway, Allan Edwin, and Pinto, Vivian de Sola, eds. The Common Muse: An Anthology of Popular British Ballad Poetry, XVth – XXth Century. London: Chatto, 1957.Google Scholar
Ruth, Jennifer. Novel Professions: Interested Disinterest and the Making of the Professional in the Victorian Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Sanders, Andrew. Dickens and the Spirit of the Age. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlicke, Paul. “‘Risen Like a Rocket’: The Impact of Sketches by Boz.” Dickens Quarterly 22 (2005): 3–18.Google Scholar
Scott, Walter. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 1830. Ed. Henderson, T. F.. 4 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1902.Google Scholar
Shattock, Joanne. “Reviewing Generations: Professionalism and the Mid-Victorian Reviewer.” Victorian Periodicals Review 35 (2002): 384–400.Google Scholar
Sherbo, Arthur. “Thoms, William John (1803–1885).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/>. Web. 19 Jan. 2007.CrossRef.+Web.+19+Jan.+2007.>Google Scholar
Stephen, Leslie. “Charles Dickens.” The Dictionary of National Biography. 1st ser. 1885–1900.Google Scholar
Stevenson, R. L. “Popular Authors.” Scribner's Magazine July 1888: 122–28.Google Scholar
Thoms, William. “Folk-Lore.” Athenaeum 22 August 1846: 862–63.Google Scholar
Thoms, William. “The Story of ‘Notes and Queries.’” Notes and Queries 5th ser. 6 (1876): 1–2, 41–42, 101–02.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trollope, Anthony. The Warden. 1855. Ed. Skilton, David. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. London: Chatto, 1958.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. ed.New York: Oxford UP, 1983.Google Scholar