A Bibliography of

Dickensian Criticism

1836-1975

Garland Reference Library of the Humanities (Vol. 12)

Books and pamphlets by R.C. Churchill

DISAGREEMENTS

HE SERVED HUMAN LIBERTY

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS BETTERS

THE POWYS BROTHERS

THE FRONTIERS OF FICTION

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DICKENSIAN CRITICISM

THE ENGLISH SUNDAY

ART AND CHRISTIANITY

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE AGNOSTIC

ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

(ed) POPE'S EPISTLE TO DR ARBUTHNOT

(with George Sampson) THE CONCISE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

SIXTY SEASONS OF LEAGUE FOOTBALL

ENGLISH LEAGUE FOOTBALL

(ed) OFFICIAL RULES OF SPORTS AND GAMES

A Bibliography of

Dickensian Criticism

1836-1975

Compiled and Edited by

R. C. Churchill

M

© R.C. Churchill 1975 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975 978-0-333-19194-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.

First published in the United States 1975 First published in the United Kingdom 1975

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras SBN 333 19194 3

ISBN 978-1-349-02817-7 ISBN 978-1-349-02815-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02815-3

This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface (p i:x)

Abbreviations (p xii)

Errata (p xiv)

INTRODUCTION (p 1)

BiblioFr&phies (p 1); Journals (p 1); Biographies (p 2);

Letters (p 5); Selections etc (p 7)

GENERAL CRITICISM: NINETEENTH CENTURY (p 9)

Period 1836-1839 (p 9); The EiFhteen-Forties (p 10);

The EiFhteen-Fifties (p 12); The Eighteen-Sixties (p 13);

The EiFhteen-Seventies (p 15); The EiFhteen-Eighties (p 16);

The EiFhteen-Nineties (p 17)

GENERAL CRITICISM: TWENTIETH CENTURY (p 19)

Decade 1900-1909 (p 19); Decade 1910-1919 (p 21);

The Nineteen-Twenties (p 23); The Nineteen-Thirties (p 25);

The Nineteen-~'orties (p 27); The Nineteen-Fifties (p 29);

The Nineteen-Sixties (p 33); Period 1970-1974 (p 35)

CRITICISM OF PARTICULAR WORKS (p 38)

Sketches by Boz (p 38); Sunday Under Three Heads (p 40);

The Pickwick Papers (p 41); Oliver Twist (p 45); Nicholas

Nickleby (p 49); Master Humphrey's Clock (p 51); The Old

Curiosity Shop (p 53); Barnaby Rudge (p 57); American

Notes (p 58); Martin Chuzzlewit (p 61); Christmas Books

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS, cont.

(p 65); A Christmas Carol (p 66); The Chimes (p 68);

The Cricket on the Hearth (p 70); The Battle of Life

(p 71); The Haunted Man (p 72); Pictures from Italy

(p 73); Dombey and Son (p 74); David Copperfield (p 79);

Household Words (p 84); Christmas Stories (p 85); A Child's

History of England (p 86); Bleak House (p 87); Hard Times

(p 93); Little Dorrit (p 99); All the Year Round (p 104);

A Tale of Two Cities (p 105); Great Expectations (p 108);

The Uncommercial Traveller (p 113); Our Mutual Friend

(p 114); George Silverman's Explanation (p 117); Edwin

Drood (p 117); Minor Works (p 122)

ASPECTS OF DICKENS (p 123)

His Popularity (p 123); His Originality (p 124); His

Reading Public (p 125); Dickens's England (p 127);

Dickens's London (p 129); Dickens in America (p 132);

Dickens in France (p 135); Dickens in Germany (p 138);

Dickens in Italy (p 140); Dickens in Russia (p 141);

The Serial Novelist (p 144); Dickens and his Illustrators

(p 147); The Literary Artist (p 150); The Moral Artist

(p 157); His Development (p 159); His Style and Language

(p 163); His Symbolism (p 168); His Characters (p 170);

Fantasy and the Grotesque (p 178); Comedy and Satire

(p 179); Sentiment and Sentimentality (p 183); Drama and

Melodrama (p 187); Stage and Platform (p 189); Dickens

the Journalist (p 193); Radical and Reformer (p 195);

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS, cont.

Dickens and Childhood (p 204); Dickens and ~ducation

(p 208); Dickens and the Universities (p 210); Dickens

and Religion (p 211); Dickens and Christmas (p 215);

Dickens and Sport (p 216); Dickens and the Stage-Coach

(p 218}; Dickens and the Railway Age (p 219); Dickens

and Crime (p 220}; Sex in Dickens (p 223); Dickens and

~llen Ternan (p 227)

CRITICAL COMPARISONS (p 229)

Dickens and Aristophanes (p 229); and Dante (p 229);

Langland (229); Chaucer (229); Cervantes (230); Marlowe

(231); Dickens and Shakespeare (p 231); and Ben Jonson

(p 234); Webster (235); Moli~re (235); Bunyan (235};

Defoe (235); Swift (236); Richardson (236); Hogarth

(237); :b'ielding (237); Sterne (239); Smollett (240);

Goldsmith (241); Blake (241); Cobbett (242); Wordsworth

(242); Scott (243); Jane Austen (244); Washington Irving

(245); Leigh Hunt (245); Carlyle (245); Thomas Hood (247);

Balzac (247); Victor Hugo (248); Bulwer Lytton (249);

Disraeli (250); Edgar Allan Poe (250); Gogol (251);

Mrs Gaskell (251); Dickens and Thackeray (p 252); and

Henry Mayhew (p 256); Charles Reade (257); Trollope (257);

the Brontes (p 258); George Eliot (259); Whitman (260);

Melville (261); Dostoevsky (261); :b'laubert (264); Wilkie

Collins (265); Tolstoy (267); Meredith (269); Samuel

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS, cont.

Butler (269); Dickens and Mark Twain (p 270); and Zola

(270); Daudet (270); Hardy (271); Henry James (271);

Bernard Shaw (273); George Gissing (273); Conrad (274);

H.G.Wells (275); Proust (276); G.K.Chesterton (276);

James Joyce (277); Ka~ka (278); D.H.Lewrence (278);

Sinclair Lewis (279); Dickens and George Orwell (279)

INDEX (p 280)

viii

PREFACE

A complete biblio~rephy o~ Dickensian criticism, ~rom his

own time to the present day, would take many volumes. The

present volume is, I believe, the most comprehensive yet

attempted.

The accent throu~hout is on chronolo~ical order. I have

tried to do justice to all periods of Dickens criticism,

not merely the Victorian period and the modern period, both

of which have been much anthologized in recent years, but

also the early twentieth century, ~rom Swinburne end

Chesterton end ~uiller-Couch to my own ~irst writing on

Dickens in 1937. So much that is currently regarded as

"modern" was ~irst pointed out many years ep-o, as is

evident ~rom the quotations I make in this book ~rom

such critics as Swinburne, Chesterton, Stephen Leacock,

~uiller-Couch, H.C.Dent, and myself. It was Chesterton

who ~irst pointed out the symbolic nature or Dickens's

literary and morel art in Bleak House; it was ~uiller-Couch

who ~irst insisted that as a novelist - end the emphasis

was his own - Dickens was the p-reatest in English and

"amonp: the ~reatest o~ all the ~reatest European novelists";

it was Stephen Leacock who wrote that "the works of Charles

Dickens represent the highest reach o~ the world's

ima~inative literature ••• the world's supreme achievement

in art"; it was H. C. Dent who ~irst pointed out that Dickens,

like Shakespeare, "sums up in his work most o~ the

ix

PREFACE, cont.

characteristice of his predecessors and who tra!lscende them

ell by the universality of his genius"; it was the present

writer in 1937 who first pointed out the inseparable nature

of Dickens's literary art and the best of his social criticism

from Oliver Twist to Hard Times and Little Dorrit and who

insisted on the central importance of his dramatic use of

the EnFlish lan~age.

This book, then, is an attempt to do justice all round,

to emphasize the value of the Dickensian criticism of the

early twentieth century, while not denying the equal value

of the best of the work done in the Victorian age and in the

modern period from Orwell, Wilson and House to the scholarly

and sophisticated present. A mini-anthology as well as a

bibliography, this book presents the evidence, and the

reader can judge for himself.

From copyright works, my quotations have had to be brief,

but fair, I trust, to their immediate context. I have

occasionally indulged myself in a longer quotation from a

work out of copyright. In regard to quotations from critice

of the Victorian age, I have relied mainly on the extracts

ouoted by Charles Dickens the Younger in hie introductione

to the Macmillan edition and by Philip Colline in hie

excellent contribution to the Critical Heritage series.

In re~rd to quotations from the early twentieth century

critics, I have usually consulted the originals, but have

X

PREFACE, cont.

also made use of the anthologies end selections which have

appeared in recent years, in particular the admirable

Penguin volume edited by Stephen Wall. Mostly it will be

found that I have indicated the source of my quotations

where I have nQ! gone to the originals - by such references

as "qu Wall 1970 p 99 11 or 11 qu Collins 1971 p 100 11 - but where

I do not make any particular reference, the reader will know

that my quotation has either been quoted many times before

or (in the case of modern works) comes from a review by

myself or some other reviewer.

To Philip Collins's Dickens Bibliography (from NCBEL 1969)

end to the work done by Madeline House, Graham Storey and

their associate editore in the truly magnificent Pilgrim

Edition of Dickens's letters - the third volume of which

I had the privilege of reviewing last year - I owe the

considerable debt shared by all who have profited by their

P.cholarly labours.

For assistance of various kinds, in my own Dickensian

labours in recent years, I am grateful to my former

colleague Mr R.E.Kellett; to my friend Mr Maurice Hussey;

to Mr Keith Brace, Literary Editor of The Birmingham Poet;

and to Ifor Evans, Lord Evans, -Professor Emeritus in the

University of Londo~

St Leonarda, Sussex

March 1976 xi

R.c.c.

ABBREVIATIONS

abr (abrid~ed); anon (anonymous); ao (and others); appx (appendix); Archiv (Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen)

BCB (British Council Booklet, Writers & Their Work series); bibliog (biblio~raphy); bk (book)

CBEL (Cambrid~e Bibliography of English Literature); cf (compare, contrast); ch (chapter); C~L (Cambridge History of English Literature); col (column); CQ (Critical Quarterly)

DNB (Dictionary of National Biography); DS (Dickens Studies); DSA (Dickens Studies Annual); DSN (Dickens Studies Newsletter)

EC (Essays in Criticism); ed (edited by); edn (edition); EL (Everyman's Library); ELH (Journal of English Literary History); EML (English Men of Letters)

FL (Fontana Library); fwd (foreword by)

HC (Harper Classics); HLQ (Huntington Library Quarterly)

ibid (same source as last entry); illustr (illustrated by); intn (introduction by); incl (includes, included, including)

JEGP (Journal of English & Germanic Philology)

Mag (Magazine); MLN (Modern Language Notes); MLQ (Modern Langua~e Quarterly); MLR (Modern Language Review); MP (Modern Philology)

NCBEL (New Cambridge Bibliography of E~lish Literature); NCF (Nineteenth-Century Fiction); nd (no date); no (number); ns (new series)

OP (Oxford Paperbacks); OPUS (Oxford Paperbacks University Series); op cit (in the work cited)

p (pa~e); pp (pages); para (paragraph); pbd (published); pbn (publication); PB (Pe~in, Pelican, Peregrine Books); PEL (Penguin English Library); PGEL (Pelican Guide to English Literature); PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America); PQ (Philological Quarterly); pref (preface, preface to, preface by); pst (posthumously); pt (part)

qu (quoted in, quoted by, quoting, auotation)

xii

ABBREVIATIONS, cont.

ref (referring to, reference found in); REL (Review of English Literature); RES (Review of English Studies); Rev (Review, Reverend); rp (reprinted, reprints, reprinting); rv (revised, revised by, revision of); rt {retitled)

SC (Signet Classics); SEL (Studies in English Literature); SP (Studies in Philology)

TLS (Times Literary Supplement); tr (translated b~); tra (translation)

UP (University Paperbacks)

vol (volume)

WC (World's Classice)

Publication in London (or London and New York) unless

otherwise stated

xiii

ERRATA

p 5 line 17: for "Priestly" read "Priestley"

p 8 line 19: for "Nesbit" read "Nisbet"

p 17 line 26: for 11 192411 read 11 1926 11

p 20 line 9: for 11 1939 11 read "1929 11

p 21 line 9: for 11 1912 11 read "1915 11

p 28 line 16: for ''chertier" read "Chartier"

p 30 line 15: for 11 194311 read 11 1953 11

p 47 line 27: for '1deit 11 read "diet"

p 51 penultimate line: for ''Wllers" read "Wellers"

p 66 line 6 from bottom: for ''Wther" read "Whether"

p 69 line 30: for "reviwers" read "reviewers"

p 71 line 8 from bottom: for "sprining" read "springing"

p 72 line 18: for "illustraots" read "illustrators"

p 75 line 3: for ''William" read "Charles"

p 96 line 13 from bottom: for "Drmatic" read "Dramatic"

p 107 line 28: for "Englisj'1 read "English"

p 110 line 22: for "A Structure" read "Structure"

p 115 penultimate line: for "The Singular'' read "Singular"

p 153 line 12: for 11 1920 11 read "1923'1

p 197 line 16: for "set" read "sent"

p 199 line 3 from bottom: for "left" read "felt"

p 212 line 15: for '1185311 read 11 1855'1

p 214 line 24: for "Manichaen" read "Manichean"

p 293 line 6 from bottom: for "Grahame'' read "Graham"

xiv