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Critical responses to Martin Chuzzlewit have varied. By examining the overlapping contexts within which Dickens wrote, this study makes original contributions to our understanding of the novel and its critical reception. The notes revise and expand the conventional wisdom regarding the sources for the American chapters, demonstrating that Dickens ddrew on a much wider field of writings about America than has been previously acknowledged. By reading the novel int he light of contemporary professional journals, Nancy Aycock Metz also exposes issues of that period which underlay Dickens's portrayal of Pecksniff, young Martin and the architectural scene. Finally the notes point to previously unidentified influences on theplot and characters, illuminating the impact on Dickens's thinking of a wide range of texts, from the Bridgewater Treatises to the Bible, from popular songs and newspaper advertisements to medical treatises and parliamentary reports.

Simultaneously published: Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Fourth volume in the Dickens Companions series, offering comprehensive annotation of the novel A Tale of Two Cities.

This exploration "provides the most extensive information yet available on the political, cultural, and personal backgrounds of a novel that today is considered a central text of Dickens's 'dark' period, and a major work of nineteenth-century literature. The Companion emphasizes the importance of the Crimean War through both the complex political rhetorical surrounding the Circumlocution Office, and Dickens's depiction of Daniel Doyce, as well as through many other textual details. The Companion also makes important distinctions between administrative reform and civil service reform, and points to differences between boards of inquiry, committees, and reports that conventional wisdom has frequently confused"--Jacket.

"'What relevance does the then of Pip's childhood and the now when he relates the story of his evolution into a gentleman have to the revised, controversial ending Dickens adopted on the advice of a fellow novelist?' David Paroissien draws on a range of nineteenth-century sources to illuminate the novel's late Georgian and mid-Victorian contexts"--Jacket.