Charles Dickens and Race

You may know that I was extremely honored earlier this year to be asked to write a blog post for the prestigious Dickens Society in London. It was well-received and there is a standing invitation to write more for them in the future.

The Dickens Society is an academic group dedicated to exploring all facets of Charles Dickens’s* life and work, but it is not an exclusive club at all. In fact I was surprised to learn how easy it is to join: by subscribing to their journal The Dickens Quarterly, you are automatically enrolled as a member.

It is The Dickens Quarterly that I would like to write about. I’ve been a member for a year now, and I am by no means either a Dickens completist, or an academic of any kind. Some of the material is a little over my head, but I’m comfortable with that. What is great is the breadth of subject matter, and how it makes you think differently not only about Dickens but also about nineteenth-century fiction, Victorian England, and much more.

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