Collaborative Dickens
Authorship and Victorian Christmas Periodicals
Published on 11. June 2019
Book
Hardback
294 pages
978-0-8214-2365-3 (ISBN)
Description
From 1850 to 1867, Charles Dickens produced special issues (called "numbers") of his journals Household Words and All the Year Round, which were released shortly before Christmas each year. In Collaborative Dickens, Melisa Klimaszewski undertakes the first comprehensive study of these Christmas numbers. She argues for a revised understanding of Dickens as an editor who, rather than ceaselessly bullying his contributors, sometimes accommodated contrary views and depended upon multivocal narratives for his own success.
Klimaszewski uncovers connections among and between the stories in each Christmas collection. She thus reveals ongoing conversations between the works of Dickens and his collaborators on topics important to the Victorians, including race, empire, supernatural hauntings, marriage, disability, and criminality. Stories from Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and understudied women writers such as Amelia B. Edwards and Adelaide Anne Procter interact provocatively with Dickens's writing. By restoring links between stories from as many as nine different writers in a given year, Klimaszewski demonstrates that a respect for the Christmas numbers' plural authorship and intertextuality results in a new view of the complexities of collaboration in the Victorian periodical press and a new appreciation for some of the most popular texts Dickens published.
Klimaszewski uncovers connections among and between the stories in each Christmas collection. She thus reveals ongoing conversations between the works of Dickens and his collaborators on topics important to the Victorians, including race, empire, supernatural hauntings, marriage, disability, and criminality. Stories from Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and understudied women writers such as Amelia B. Edwards and Adelaide Anne Procter interact provocatively with Dickens's writing. By restoring links between stories from as many as nine different writers in a given year, Klimaszewski demonstrates that a respect for the Christmas numbers' plural authorship and intertextuality results in a new view of the complexities of collaboration in the Victorian periodical press and a new appreciation for some of the most popular texts Dickens published.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a mature and original piece of scholarship that adds substantially to the critical understanding of Dickens and is the first comprehensive overview of his Christmas numbers. Considering each number as its own aesthetic unit, Klimaszewski convincingly argues for a different and more flexible understanding of authorship (and of "Dickens") as polyvocal, often contradictory, and conversational in nature. Her discussion of Dickens's collaborations with Wilkie Collins is particularly strong." "Collaborative Dickens is a new and distinct contribution that will be of substantial interest to Dickens scholars, to those working more broadly on Victorian studies, to researchers focused on the periodical press, and to scholars examining models of collaborative authorship." "Melisa Klimaszewski masterfully guides the reader through the Christmas numbers Charles Dickens edited for Household Words and All the Year Round-eighteen in total from 1850 to 1867, with forty writers represented-making a compelling case for a re-evaluation of collaborative writing and academic approaches to it, whether in the case of Dickens, the Victorians, or more broadly." (British Association for Victorian Studies Newsletter 22.2 (Summer 2022))More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Athens
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paper over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8214-2365-3 (9780821423653)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2019
1st Edition
Ohio University Press
€73.49
Available for download
Person
Melisa Klimaszewski is Professor of English and the director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Drake University. She has edited several of Dickens's collaborative works, authored a critical bibliography of scholarship on Dickens for Oxford University Press's Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, and published short biographies of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.