This study is intended both for first-time readers of The Sound and the Fury andsince it offers new scholarship and critical argument on Faulknerfor established critics and scholars. Chapter 1 provides some general context about Faulkner's life and work in the American South and 'Yoknapatawpha County', and introduces the form and style of Faulkner's novel. Chapter 2 provides a discussion of the contexts of Southern history and Faulkner's family history. Chapter 3 is a discussion of the inf...

Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) Dickens’ last completed novel, has been critically praised as a profound and troubled masterpiece, and yet is has received far less scholarly attention than his other major works. This volume is the first book-length study of the novel. It explores every aspect of Dickens’ sustained imaginative involvement with his age. In particular its original research into hitherto neglected sources reveals not only Dickens’ reactions to the important developments during the ...

Following his father's death John Harmon returns to London to claim his inheritance, but he finds he is eligible only if he marries Bella Wilfur. To observe her character he assumes another identity and secures work with his father's foreman, Mr Boffin, who is also Bella's guardian. Disguise and concealment play an important role in the novel and individual identity is examined within the wider setting of London life: in the 1860s the city was aflame with spiralling financial speculation w...

What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plaintruth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceivesin a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent toa short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there mayoccasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and somereaders; whether it is ALWAYS the writer who colours highly, or whetherit is now and then the reader whose ey...

The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book begins when his son is born, and Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. Following the advice of Mrs Louisa Chick, his sister, Dombey employs a wet nurse named Mrs Richards (Toodle). Dombey already has a daughter, Florence, whom he neglects. One day, Mrs Richards, Florence and her maid, Susan Nipper, secretly pay a visit to Mr...

In Little Dorrit, the reader is thrown into the fascinating world of upper class luxury and the hardships of the working class in 19th-century London. The story follows the humble and caring Amy Dorrit, affectionately called Little Dorrit, growing up in the notorious Marshalsea prison where her father is incarcerated. When a mysterious foreign gentleman, Arthur Clennam, returns to England and enters Dorrit’s life, a beautiful and complicated love story unfolds, crossing the bounda...

Embark on a delightful journey through the eccentric and humorous world of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. This quintessentially British novel introduces the affable and inquisitive Samuel Pickwick and his eclectic band of companions as they set out on a series of misadventures across the English countryside. From legal entanglements to romantic escapades, Dickens weaves a tapestry of wit and charm, offering a satirical commentary on society’s quirks and foibles.The...

A novel of social and moral themes, Hard Times is the archetypal Dickens novel, filled with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. Published in 1854, it is set in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston, and tells the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality over emotion. Based on James Mill (the Utilitarian leader), Gradgrind ...

It is so strange to see a long, well-plotted novel suddenly come to a dead stop. (Of a projected twelve episodes, Dickens wrote six before his death.) The title character is either murdered or missing, and a large cast of characters in London and Cloisterham (Dickenss Rochester) are involved in their own way in discovering what happened to Edwin Drood.There is first of all John Jasper, an opium addict who suspiciously loves Droods ex-fiancee; there is a nameless old woman who dealt...

This book contains now several HTML tables of contents that will make reading a real pleasure! The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, a short novel by Charles Dickens, was written and published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol. It is the second in his series of "Christmas books": five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840's.

In tribute to the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Dickens, Delphi Classics is pleased to introduce Dickensiana, a first of its kind e-compilation of period accounts of Dickens’s life and works, rare 19th and early 20th century books and articles about Dickens and Dickensian locales, reminiscences by family, friends and colleagues, tribute poems, parodies, satires and sequels based on his works and much more, spiced with an abundance of vintage images. Delphi looks forward to publishin...

Dickens's England was a time of unprecedented energy and change which laid the foundations of our own modern society. There was a new world coming into being: new towns, new machines, new and revolutionary ideas, new songs and dances, music-halls and popular novels, as well as new wealth for the smug middle classes. For others, however, there was poverty, struggle and hard labour. Dickens's characters with whom we are so familiar - orphan Oliver and cunning Fagin,...