The Edinburgh Companion to Charles Dickens and the Arts - (Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities) by Juliet John & Claire Wood

About the Book

Re-examines Charles Dickens's under-recognised importance to nineteenth-century and contemporary understandings of the arts

Book Synopsis

The Edinburgh Companion to Charles Dickens and the Arts explores Dickens's rich and complex relationships with a myriad of art forms and the far-reaching resonance of his works across the arts overall. This volume reassesses Dickens's prescient philosophy of art, both through a historical and a present-day lens and in the context of debates about the cultural value of the arts. Across thirty-three original essays, it outlines the ways in which Dickens broke down oppositions between high and low art, money and the aesthetic, the extraordinary and the ordinary, and art for its own sake and the social good. In doing so, it considers how Dickens prefigured the arts of the future, including rap music, television, fanfiction and global cinema.

From the Back Cover

[headline]Re-examines Charles Dickens's under-recognised importance to nineteenth-century and contemporary understandings of the arts The Edinburgh Companion to Charles Dickens and the Arts explores Dickens's rich and complex relationships with a myriad of art forms and the far-reaching resonance of his works across the arts overall. This volume reassesses Dickens's prescient philosophy of art, both through a historical and a present-day lens and in the context of debates about the cultural value of the arts. Across thirty-three original essays, it outlines the ways in which Dickens broke down oppositions between high and low art, money and the aesthetic, the extraordinary and the ordinary, and art for its own sake and the social good. In doing so, it considers how Dickens prefigured the arts of the future, including rap music, television, fanfiction and global cinema. [editor biographies]Juliet John is Vice President, Education and Professor of English Literature at City, University of London. She is the author of Dickens's Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture (2001) and Dickens and Mass Culture (2010) and the editor of Dickens and Modernity (2012) and The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture (2016). Claire Wood is Associate Professor in Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. She is the author of Dickens and the Business of Death (2015) and has published on epitaphs, material culture, adaptation and Dickens's ghost stories.

Review Quotes

This illustrated collection includes 33 essays on how the arts--broadly defined and including the popular--shaped both Dickens's works and the cultural responses to those works. In assembling this collection, John (City Univ. of London, UK) builds on her oft-cited Dickens and Mass Culture (2010) to create additional avenues for exploration. Her excellent introductory essay, written with coeditor Wood (Univ. of Leicester, UK), contextualizes Dickens's view of the arts and the ways in which his attitudes about the arts often anticipate those in the 21st century. The strength of the collection is its breadth. For example, in the section "Performing Arts," scholars focus on dance, musical theater, puppetry, and rap music (which features a surprising number of references to Dickens's characters and plots). Another strength of the volume is the innovative nature of many of the essays. While analyses of film and television adaptations of Dickens's works are common, this collection offers essays on Dickens films from the silent era, recent television adaptations, and global film treatments. Overall, the collection is remarkably rich, entertaining, and provocative. Essays include suggestions for further reading and helpful scholarly apparatus.

Summing Up: Highly recommended.

--R. D. Morrison, emeritus, Morehead State University "CHOICE"

A monumental achievement, this superb collection comprehensively surveys the variety, complexity and sophistication of Dickens's engagement with 'the Arts', defining them capaciously and embracing the popular, as he did.--Catherine Waters, University of Kent

This richly engaging collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars brings out the surprising range of art forms and conventions that helped to shape Dickens's extraordinary career.--James Eli Adams, Columbia University

About the Author

Juliet John is Vice President, Education, and Professor of English Literature at City, University of London. She has published widely on Dickens and Victorian studies. Among her books are Dickens's Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture (2001), Dickens and Mass Culture (2010), (ed.) Dickens and Modernity (2012) and (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture (2016).

Claire Wood is Associate Professor in Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. She is the author of Dickens and the Business of Death (2015) and has published on epitaphs, material culture, adaptation and Dickens's ghost stories.