The Verse of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens
Edited by Lydia Craig, Emily Middleton

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£95.00

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Represents the first comprehensive academic collection of Charles Dickens’s verse productions

Provides an introductory overview to Dickens’s literary influences and development as a frequent writer of verse
Collects Dickens’s verse output from print sources and global archives
Offers previously unseen archival items, several of which are accompanied by high-definition scans for academic study
Includes three appendices to resolve long-standing disputes over theorised, potential, or misattributed poetic works

The Verse of Charles Dickens reveals Charles Dickens’s complex, tortured relationship from 1830 to 1870 with the form and function of verse, a highly influential literary medium in the nineteenth century. Renowned as a prose writer, not as a poet, Dickens’s various engagements with the genre reflect a dichotomy of enjoyment and aversion. Positioning Dickens as sensitive to the emotive capacities of verse, despite arguably lacking lyrical talent, solidifies the active role it played in his career and relationships. Whether utilising it for flirtation, political satire, parody, eulogy, or to construct elaborate riddles, Dickens continued to ‘drop into’ poetry. Furthermore, as editor of Household Words and All the Year Round, he regulated and influenced its periodical production by other Victorian writers. Uncovering new biographical and historical allusions in over one hundred verse items, this collection’s editorial apparatus also cites Dickens’s oeuvre and previous scholarship, clarifies definitions, and demystifies cultural references.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Note on the Texts

Introduction: Dickens as Poet

The Autograph Albums of Maria and Anne Beadnell
O’Thello (1833-4)
The Autograph Album of Ellen Beard
The Autograph Album of Anna Maria Carter Hall
The Strange Gentleman (1836)
The Village Coquettes (1836)
The Autograph Album of Georgina Ross
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837)
Epitaph of Mary Hogarth* (May 1837)
Oh Mr. Hick* (26 July 1837)
Song of the Month, No. VIII (1 August 1837)
Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular! (1837)
The Lamplighter (1838)
Epistolary Lines to Mr. Groves of the Needles (September 1838)
The Autograph Album of Priscilla Horton
You’re Wery Funny so You Air (9 April 1839)
My Foot is in the House (2 June 1840)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1)
The Fine Old English Gentleman (7 August 1841)
The Quack Doctor’s Proclamation (14 August 1841)
Subjects for Painters (21 August 1841)
Epitaph of Katherine Thomson* (26 November 1841)
Epitaph of Charles Irving Thornton* (4 April 1842)
Love Song (29 April 1842)
Prologue to The Patrician’s Daughter* (12 December 1842)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44)
The Autograph Album of Christiana Weller
A Word in Season (1844)
The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In (December 1844)
Prologue to The Elder Brother* (28 December 1845)
The British Lion (24 January 1846)
The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers (14 February 1846)
The Autograph Album of Henry Riley Bradbury
Dombey and Son (1846-8)
But Had You Seen Him* (13 January 1849)
New Song (25 June 1849)
Elegy (3 December 1849)
Cheer for the Year* (31 December 1850)
Stay Yet Again* (January 1851)
Epitaph of Dick (1851)
Songs Incidental to the Character of 'Tom Thumb', as Represented by Mr H (6 January 1854)
When the Praise Thou Meetest* (16 January 1854)
Bob Tarter’s Parody* (18 February 1854)
Hidden Light (26 August 1854)
The Response (c. 1854)
The Lighthouse (May 1855)
‘Whom the Rheumatiz, Not Gout’* (12 May 1855)
The Frozen Deep (1856)
Unknown Autograph Album
Little Dorrit (1855–7)
The Blacksmith (30 April 1859)
Great Expectations (1860–1)
Epitaph of Mr. Arthur Smith* (9 October 1861)
Epitaph of Walter Landor Dickens* (February 1864)
‘Romance. From the Pen of Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Redforth’, Holiday Romance, Our Young Folks (March 1868)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)

Appendix A: Poems Attributed to Charles Dickens
Appendix B: Poems Potentially Authored by Charles Dickens:
Appendix C: Poems Incorrectly Attributed to Charles Dickens:

References

Reviews

Craig and Middleton have produced an exemplary edition of these verses. Annotations are admirably detailed, setting the context for each piece and providing information about people and places mentioned, links to the events of Dickens’s life, and obsolete words and phrases which may not be familiar to all readers. The introduction is lucidly written and offers a thought-provoking perspective on the place of the verse in the overall framework of Dickens’s life, output and achievement.
– Peter Cook, The Dickensian

The Verse of Charles Dickens constitutes essential scholarship that belongs on the same shelf as K. J. Fielding’s The Speeches of Charles Dickens and Philip Collins’s Charles Dickens: The Public Readings. Craig and Middleton assess Dickens’s collected verse against thoroughly researched and cited alternative assessments, resulting in a robust debate.
– Robert C. Hanna, Bethany Lutheran College

About the Author

Lydia Craig is Lecturer of English at Eastern Illinois University, Associate Editor of The Charles Dickens Letters Project, Copy Editor of The Dickensian, and Treasurer of the Dickens Society. Chapters and articles on the life and works of Charles Dickens, with a particular focus on digital, intertextual, and biographical research, have appeared in The Theological Dickens (Routledge, 2021), Dickens and Women Re-Observed (Edward Everett Root, 2020), Victorian Periodicals Review, Dickens Quarterly, Dickens Studies Annual, and The Dickensian. A monograph in-progress, Charles Dickens in Lombard Street: Love, Ambition, and Revenge, examines Dickens’s unsuccessful courtship of Maria Beadnell.

Emily Middleton is Lecturer in Digital Humanities & Digital Skills at Leeds University, Editor of the Dickensian, co-Editor of the Curran Index, consultant editor for The Charles Dickens Letters Project, and is on the editorial board of The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens. Besides editing and contributing to Dickens After Dickens (White Rose University Press, 2020), Bell has co-edited a special issue of Victoriographies entitled ‘Dickens, Death, and Afterlives’ (2020). Published chapters and articles on Dickens can be found in Companion to Popular Fiction (McFarland, 2018), Dickens Studies Annual, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and The Dickensian.