One of Dickens's greatest works of social criticism, Little Dorrit is a scathing indictment of mid-Victorian England which centers on the Marshalsea Prison and the Dorrit family who live there, against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal. Revelation and redemption haunt Dickens's portrayal of human relations as fundamentally distorted by class and money. The swindling financier Merdle, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office, and a teeming cast of characters display the inadequacy of secular morality in the face of contemporary social and political confusion. This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text and includes all forty-one original illustrations by Phiz. The volume boasts a new introduction by Dennis Walder, highlighting Dickens's move from social and political issues to more personal, even spiritual concerns while maintaining the wide scope of his mature fiction. Also included are an up-to-date bibliography and full chronology of the author's life and times, an appendix which reproduces Dickens's number plans for the novel, substantially revised and updated notes, and a map of London. Mixing humor and pathos, irony and satire, Little Dorrit reveals a master of fiction in top form. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum 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, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Little Dorrit (Oxford World's Classics)

Children's Books

Walder, Dennis

DICKENS., CHARLES

Education & Reference

Oxford University Press

Athol Fugard (Macmillan modern dramatists)

Literature & Fiction

Macmillan

Athol Fugard is widely recognized as one of the most important living dramatists, a total man of the theatre. Professor Walder's study asks how successfully the South African's dramatist's work continues the search for reconciliation and harmony in a country still haunted by its terrible past.

Athol Fugard (Modern Dramatists)

Dramas & Plays

Dickens and Religion

The importance of understanding Dickens's religion to obtain a full appreciation of his achievement has long been admitted; but this is the first critical study of the interaction between Dickens's religious beliefs and his creative imagination throughout his career. The novelist's religious beliefs are a pervasive and deeply felt presence in his works even if they are not always clearly thought out or expressed. Too discreet and humane to be as explicit, or as dull, as most of the professedly religious novelists of his time, Dickens nevertheless suggests in his own way a liberal Protestant belief, shot through with Romantic, transcendental yearnings, which undoubtedly appealed to a very wide range of readers. Dickens's religion is shown to be that of a great popular writer, who created a unique kind of fiction, and a unique relationship with his readers, by the absorption and transformation of less respectable contemporary forms, from fairy-tale and German romance to tract and print. Walder's thoroughly researched and lively book provides students of Dickens and the Victorian period with an original perspective on the novelist's methods and attitudes. He offers a judicious and informed exploration of Dickens's obsessive themes, from the 'fall' of innocence in Pickwick Papers, to the search for a religious 'answer' in Little Dorrit. Each chapter focuses upon the striking congruences revealed between individual novels, or groups of novels, and particular religious themes. The views expressed in Dickens's lesser fiction and non-fiction are drawn on throughout, as are those in the influential contemporary press.

Religion & Spirituality

Routledge

Postcolonial nostalgias (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)

This book offers an original and informed critique of a widespread, yet often misunderstood, condition ― nostalgia, a pervasive human emotion connecting people across national, historical, and personal boundaries. Walder analyses the writings of some of those entangled in the aftermath of empire, tracing the hidden connections underlying their yearnings for a common identity and a homeland, and their struggles to recover their histories. Through a series of comparative reflections upon the representation in literary and related cultural forms of memory, he shows how admitting the past into the present through nostalgia enables former colonial or diasporic subjects to gain a deeper understanding of the networks of power within which they are caught in the modern world, and beyond which it may yet be possible to move. Considering authors as varied as V.S Naipaul, J.G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, W.G. Sebald, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as well as versions of "Bushman" song, Walder pursues the often wayward, ambiguous paths of nostalgia as it has been represented beyond, but also within, Europe, so as to identify some of those processes of communal and individual experience that constitute the present and, by implication, the future.

Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation and Memory (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)

British & Irish

In this original and accessible introduction to post-colonial literatures in English, Dennis Walder guides the reader through the historical, linguistic, and theoretical issues that inform post-colonial literary study.

Post-Colonial Literatures in English

Wiley/Blackwell

In this original and accessible introduction to post-colonial literatures in English, Dennis Walder guides the reader through the historical, linguistic, and theoretical issues that inform post-colonial literary study.

Post-Colonial Literatures in English: History, Language, Theory

Athol Fugard (Writers and their Work)

Athol Fugard is widely recognised as one of the most important living dramatists, a total man of the theatre. Professor Walder's study asks how successfully the South African's dramatist's work continues the search for reconciliation and harmony in a country still haunted by its terrible past.

Athol Fugard (Writers and Their Work)

Liverpool University Press