Dickens and Popular Entertainment

• Preface; List of Illustrations; References and Abbreviations; Chapter 1 Introduction: Dickens and the Changing Patterns of Popular Entertainment Chapter 2 Popular Entertainment and Childhood Chapter 3 Nicholas Nickleby The Novel as Popular Entertainment Chapter 4 The Old Curiosity Shop The Assessment of Popular Entertainment Chapter 5 Hard Times The Necessity of Popular Entertainment Chapter 6 Popular Entertainment in Dickens’s Journalism Chapter 7 Dickens’s Public Readings: the Abiding Commitment; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index

Dickens and Popular Entertainment is a classic text in Dickens criticism. Meticulously researched, it is a work of trail-blazing scholarship. Dickens’s relationship with popular entertainment is so central to an understanding of his works and worldview that there is now a whole sub-field of Dickens studies devoted to it. But Schlicke’s was the first to tackle this subject in depth and head on. It is a testimony to the quality of its scholarship that it remains a major work of Dickens criticism and has been since its publication. Always a staple feature on Dickens bibliographies across the globe, Dickens and Popular Entertainment has become part of the canon of enduring Dickens criticism.Juliet JohnHildred Carlile Chair of English Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London