1st Edition
Dickens, Journalism, and Nationhood Mapping the World in Household Words
Dickens, Journalism, and Nationhood examines Charles Dickens’ weekly family magazine Household Words in order to develop a detailed picture of how the journal negotiated, asserted and simultaneously deconstructed Englishness as a unified (and sometimes unifying) mode of expression. It offers close readings of a wide range of materials that self-consciously focus on the nature of England as well as the relationship between Britain and the European continent, Ireland, and the British colonies. Starting with the representation and classification of identities that took place within the framework of the Great Exhibition of 1851, it suggests that the journal strives for a model of the world in concentric circles, spiraling outward from the metropolitan center of London. Despite this apparent orderliness, however, each of the national or regional categories constructed by the journal also resists and undermines such a clear-cut representation.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: ‘Amidst the heterogeneous masses’: Household Words and the Great Exhibition of 1851
Chapter Two: (Un-)Englishness and National Character in Household Words
Chapter Three: Household Words’ Treatment of Ireland
Chapter Four: ‘Continental ways and means’: Europe in Household Words
Chapter Five: ‘Interlopers in the East’: Household Words and India
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Sabine Clemm lectures on the nineteenth-century novel, culture, and poetry at the University of Southampton.
"This carefully researched study will interest both scholars of 19th-century history and Dickens spcialists." - J.D. Vann, emeritus, University of North Texas