Introduction: Dickens’ Nonfiction Prose

Abstract

Until fairly recently, it was commonplace to view Dickens’ nonfictional prose as either youthful “apprentice” work or useful background for the more creative task of dealing with his fiction. However, this idea has begun to be questioned, especially over the last twenty or so years. Building on recent scholarship, essays in this special issue of Nineteenth-Century Prose examine a variety of nonfictional Dickensian texts, employing a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches from animal studies to the use of digital tools and computational literary studies while not neglecting close, scrupulous attention to the nonfictional text. Throughout the issue, essayists take the view that Dickens’ nonfiction is worthy of study in its own right because writing nonfiction was for Dickens not ancillary to his ‘major’ work as a novelist. Instead, he saw his writing as all of a piece: a continuing critique of the society that he loved dearly but that was in great need of reform.