- Paperback: 704 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; New edition edition (5 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 019866253X
- ISBN-13: 978-0198662532
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 216,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
"A composite portrait of the writer and the age. It will prove invaluable to scholars, readers, and admirers of Dickens into the next century and beyond."--The Times (London)
"This excellent work gives the user a renewed appreciation for the tremendous range of Dickens's interests and talents and provides fresh insights into the age in which he lived. Its strong emphasis on and extensive coverage of the political, social, and artistic milieu surround Dickens and his circle set it apart from...Charles Dickens A to Z, which treats those aspects much more briefly."--Booklist
"The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens succeeds wonderfully in its stated aim 'to illuminate the active interrelation between the man, his writings and activities, and his time.' It is a dense compendium of scholarship, but it is also leavened with delightful details."--Times Literary Supplement (London)
"This book represents an important contemporary resource, of value to both the general reader and t
Product Description
The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens offers in one volume a lively and authoritative compendium of information about Dickens: his life, his works, his reputation and his cultural context. In addition to entries on his works, his characters, his friends and places mentioned in his works, it includes extensive information about the age in which he lived and worked: the people, events, and institutions which provided the context for his work; the houses he lived in, the countries he visited, the ideas he satirised, the circumstances he responded to, the culture he participated in. Compiled by a distinguished editorial team, The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens provides a synthesis of the state of the art of Dickens studies and contains a more authoritative, concise, extensive and accessible range of information than any other reference work on Dickens.
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A Beckett, Gilbert Abbott (1811-56), comic writer, playwright, and police magistrate. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
A Beckett, Gilbert Abbott (1811-56), comic writer, playwright, and police magistrate. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A brilliant and comprehensive guide, with extensive articles on every aspect of Dickens's life and works. All the novels and other writing and covered in the depth, including information on plot, characters, publishing history and critical reception. There are also articles to put Dickens into context, for example, there is information about dramatisations and TV and film adaptations, while the article on London covers Dickens' life there, places mentioned in the novels, and background information on life in London. The book is thoroughly researched, and easy to read: this makes the book useful for anyone who reads Dickens, whether for enjoyment or study.
Format:Paperback
Charles Dickens, in his long career as a novelist, created a literary world of characters and it is now an simple task to keep acquainted with everyone (not that one would want to!).
This is a comprehensive, well-organised guide to most of them, each with a very helpful comment and description. For anyone studying or reading through Dickens, this is an ideal companion.
Recommended
This is a comprehensive, well-organised guide to most of them, each with a very helpful comment and description. For anyone studying or reading through Dickens, this is an ideal companion.
Recommended
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Strongly recommend the hardback rather than the paperback
13 Nov 2003
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is an essential reference book for any serious student or reader of Dickens, though I would strongly recommend that one take the extra effort to obtain a copy in hardcover rather than paper. The two editions are entirely different productions. If one had held both editions on one's hand, the differences are blatant, but merely reading about them will not reveal how profoundly they vary from one another. The paperback has a single virtue: price. It is cheaper by a considerable margin. Looking at the pagination, one might imagine that the paper edition contains everything found in the hardback. The paper edition runs to 675 pages, while the hardback runs to 654. The hardback, however, in addition to being a far more attractive volume and containing some sections in a larger, more easily read typeface, contains a host of photographs, illustrations, and maps that greatly enhance the value of the volume. I would like to point out that while the hardback lists for $55.00, it can persistently be found on Amazon for far less than that. I obtained my copy remaindered on Amazon for $16.95, which is the same as the list price for the paperback.
I can't say enough about the quality of the articles in this volume. Top Dickens scholars from around the world have been recruited to write on a host of subjects, in particular on subjects that will cast light on the world in which Dickens lived and about which he wrote. Although his books are certainly not neglected, the emphasis is as much on Dickens and his world as on Dickens and his books. The goal of the book is clearly an understanding of Dickens in context, with the added belief that knowing his context will immeasurably deepen one's enjoyment and understanding of his works.
My lone complaint with the book is the book does not contain a usable index or list of characters. There is an alphabetical list of all characters in Dickens's books at the end, but such a list only tells you what work a character appears in, not who they are. If you are dipping back into a novel of Dickens with the intent of enjoying a chapter or two (as opposed to rereading the entire work from beginning to end), one might not remember whom a particular individual is. It would have been nice to have a one or two line explanation of whom each character is, in addition to what work in which they appeared. I believe this would have enhanced the value of this as a reference work.
The inherent problem of any reference work like this will be the degree to which it is usable. There is a host of information, but how can it be accessed and recovered? This volume suffers to some degree, but Paul Schlicke has gone to great lengths to multiply the number of aides to teasing out the book's information. The articles are organized alphabetically, but there is a wealth of indexes. There is, for instance, a "Classified Contents List," that has headings such as "Dickens's Reputation," and subheadings under that like "Critics and scholars of Dickens" and "Scholarly and critical approaches to Dickens," with titles of articles under each. By reading those articles, one finds the information one needs. There is some overlap with the book's index (which tends to refer to article titles rather than page numbers--perhaps that was in order to accommodate both the hardback and paperback editions, which have different pagination) and the "Classified Contents List," but these provide two different approaches to obtaining the information one needs.
This is not the only book on Dickens that a reader of Dickens would want to own. One would certainly want to refer to a biography by someone like Peter Ackroyd or Edgar Johnson, or perhaps a critical appreciation like that of G. K. Chesterton. But I would definitely place it on the short list of books that one would like to own.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Everything You Wanted to Know About Dickens
2 April 2000
Format:Hardcover
The Oxford Readers Companion to Charles Dickens serves as an alphabetical tour of the life of the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era. With entries ranging from "A Becket, Gilbert" to "Yates, Frederick" this wonderfully engrossing reference book offers readers information about every aspect of the life, work, and historical environment in which the great man created magic. From analytical entries about every novel to biographical sketches of his friends and foes, this book truly brings Dickens to vivid and enjoyable life. No scholar of the 19th century novel should miss this comprenhensive work.
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