导语

  

    Charles John Huffam Dickens, was an English novelist of the Victorian era as well as a vigorous social campaigner.
    Critics George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton championed Dickens's mastery of prose, his endless invention of unique, clever personalities, and his powerful social sensibilities, but fellow writers such as George Henry Lewes, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf faulted his work for sentimentality, implausible occurrences, and grotesque characterizations.
    The popularity of Dickens's novels and short stories has meant that not one has ever gone out of print.[citation needed] Many of Dickens's novels first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialized form—a popular format for fiction at the time—and, unlike many other authors who completed entire novels before serial production commenced, Dickens often composed his works in parts, in the order in which they were meant to appear.

内容提要

  

INTRODUCTION
1 The Dickens Period
2 The Boyhood of Dickens
3 The Youth of Dickens
4 The Pickwick Papers
5 The Great Popularity
6 Dickens and America
7 Dickens and Christmas
8 The Time of Transition
9 Later Lift and Works
10 The Great Dickens Characters
11 On the Alleged Optimism of Dickens
12 A Note on the Future of Dickens
INDEX