9 - The Future of Dickens Studies: Trends in the Twenty-First Century

Summary

REVIEWING DICKENS CRITICISM in 2003, Frederick Karl observed that “if the present sampling of recent critical and scholarly books on Dickens is any indication of what is happening and what is yet to come, Dickens studies are more than alive and well; they have turned their subject into an iconic figure, the prose Shakespeare” (610). As Karl suggests, all signs point to continuing strength, even growth, in the Dickens Industry. Books and articles continue to appear every year as a new crop of Dickens scholars revisits the novels, stories and the journalism to find some hitherto undiscovered nugget of wisdom about Dickens's artistry or social concerns, or to apply new theories to works not yet deconstructed, historicized, or scrutinized through the lens of gender or culture. What directions such studies might take can be surmised from a brief survey of criticism written during the first years of the new millennium.

Surveys and Biographies

Dickens scholars celebrated the millennium by issuing a number of retrospectives and surveys that attempt to define Dickens — the man, his work, and the industry that has grown up around both — for a new generation. One of the first of such books to appear was Robert Newsom's Charles Dickens Revisited (2000) in the Twayne's English Authors series. Twenty years earlier Harland Nelson had produced a study of the novelist focused on issues important to undergraduate students.