Charles Dickens Project

Major Works

• The Pickwick Papers (1836-37)
• Adventures of Oliver Twist, or The parish boy's progress (1837-39)
• Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39)
• The old curiosity shop (1840-41)
• A Christmas carol (1843)
• The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44)
• Dombey and son (1846-48)
• David Copperfield (1849-50)
• Bleak house (1852-53)
• Hard times: for these times (1854)
• Little dorrit (1855-57)
• A Tale of two cities (1859)
• Great expectations (1860-61)

Annotated Bibliography

• Bigelow, Gordon, 1963-. 2000. Market indicators: Banking and domesticity in dickens's bleak house. ELH 67, (2): 589-615.

In "Market Indicators" (2000), Gordon Bigelow argues that the metaphors Charles Dickens' Bleak House refer to "market circulation" and economics. He uses the metaphors of Chancery as the market and as famine, and domesticity as finance. He concludes that Dickens' position is relatively close to that of Bagehot, the editor of The Economist in 1858. The purpose is to show an underlying meaning often skimmed over in a work of Dickens.

• Federico, Annette, 1960-. 2004. David copperfield and the pursuit of happiness. Victorian Studies 46, (1): 69-95.

In "David Copperfield and the pursuit of happiness" Annette Frederico asserts that David Copperfield centrals around a theme of pursuing happiness and expresses Charles Dickens' social and economic liberalism and increasing frustration. She uses support from the text of the novel to conclude that Dickens connects the idea of pursuing personal happiness to the economic idea of general good.

• Jaffe, Audrey. 1994. Spectacular sympathy: Visuality and ideology in dickens's A christmas carol. PMLA 109, (2) (Mar.): 254-65.

In "Spectacular Sympathy" Audrey Jaffe shows the themes of sympathy in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. She cites "Victorian culture's dominant values" to explain her point. The sympathy Jaffe explores also pertains to the sympathy Adam Smith argues vehemently for in economics. She concludes that A Christmas Carol is a novel of the culture Dickens lived in.

• Rowlinson, Matthew Charles, 1956-. 1996. Reading capital with little nell. The Yale Journal of Criticism 9, (2): 347-80.

In "Reading Capital with Little Nell" Matthew Rowlinson contends that Marx left out the important principle of materialism in his theory of capital. He uses Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop to illustrate this point. He states that The Old Curiosity Shop "allegorizes the formal conditions of its own existence" and this allegory can be applied to the flaws in Marx's theory. Rowlinson concludes that the characters in The Old Curiosity Shop support the missing materialism.