The Pilgrim Edition Of The Letters Of Charles Dickens Volume 6 1850 1852

This volume presents 1,592 letters, 668 of them previously unpublished, for the years 1850 to 1852. This was a time of great activity for Dickens, who completed the serial publication of David Copperfield, began work on Bleak House, successfully established the weekly Household Words (in which his own serial A Child's History of England appeared), and wrote about 100 articles and stories for the journal, including many uncollected pieces. In April 1851 he and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton founded the Guild of Literature and Art, a scheme to help writers and artists. He also suffered a number of personal blows: the deaths of his father, his baby daughter Dora, and two of his close friends, Richard Watson and Alfred D'Orsay; there was also anxiety over the illness of his wife Catherine.

This volume contains more than 1200 letters, a third of them never before published, together with a substantial Addenda of over 280 letters from the years 1831 to 1852, which appeared since publication of the earlier volumes of the edition. The period covered by this volume is remarkable: Dickens continued to edit Household Words (in which Hard Times appeared), finished Bleak House and began Little Dorrit, as well as conducted readings for charity, involving himself in other dramatic social and charitable works, and traveled in Switzerland and Italy.

Sally Ledger offers substantial readings of the influences of radical writers on works from Pickwick to Little Dorrit.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Creating the Reader and Writing the Writer -- 1 Reciprocal Readers and the 1830s-40s -- 2 The Hero of His Life -- 3 First-Person-Narrators and Editorial 'Conducting': Limited Intimacy and the Shared Imaginary -- 4 Decoding the Text -- 5 Afterlives -- Bibliography -- Index

'I see her now - cousin Phillis. The westering sun shone full upon her, and made a slanting stream of light into the room within.' Elizabeth Gaskell has long been one of the most popular of Victorian novelists, yet in her lifetime her shorter fictions were equally well loved, and they are among the most accomplished examples of the genre. The novella-length Cousin Phillis is a lyrical depiction of a vanishing way of life and a girl's disappointment in love: deceptively simple, its undercurrent of feeling leaves an indelible impression. The other five stories in this selection were all written during the 1850s for Dickens's periodical Household Words. They range from a quietly original tale of urban poverty and a fallen woman in 'Lizzie Leigh' to an historical tale of a great family in 'Morton Hall'; echoes of the French Revolution, the bleakness of winter in Westmorland, and a tragic secret are brought vividly to life. Heather Glen reflects on the stories' original periodical publication and on the nineteenth-century development of the short story in her Introduction to these immensely readable and sophisticated tales. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.