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Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper: Representing the People

Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper: Representing the People

by Berman, Carolyn Vellenga
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780192845405 Oxford University Press

This book examines Charles Dickens's fiction alongside publications emanating from Parliament. It argues that Dickens and Parliament were engaged in competitive efforts to represent the People at a crucial moment in the history of representative democracy--when the British government was under enormous political pressure to expand the franchise beyond a narrow band of male landowners. Contending that fiction and the literature of Parliament interacted at a host of levels--jostling one another in the same bookshops--it reads Dickens's novels in tandem with blue books, the practice texts of shorthand manuals, and Dickens's journalism. It shows how his fiction mocks parliamentary form (as in Pickwick Papers), canvasses the history of parliamentary representation (as in Bleak House), and depicts the relation of the People to the state as well as commerce (as in Little Dorrit). It thus rethinks the history of the Victorian novel by examining its rivalry with Parliament in the expanding world of print publication.

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BrandOxford University Press
Pub dateMay 17, 2022
ISBN-100192845403
ISBN-139780192845405
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions6.1 × 1.1 × 9 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2026-04-24 15:08
$159.41
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