Routledge Dickens and Empire - Postcolonial Theory & Victorian Literature

Dickens and Empire provides a comprehensive postcolonial reassessment of Charles Dickens's imaginative engagement with the British Empire throughout his literary career. Using postcolonial theory alongside detailed readings of Dickens's novels, journalism and personal correspondence, this scholarly work explores how Dickens utilised Britain's imperial holdings as imaginative spaces to address pressing domestic and personal concerns. The book traces an entangled discourse between race and class in Dickens's writing, drawing upon extensive primary material to offer a radical reevaluation of the writer's stance on racial matters and his complex relationship with colonialism. Published by Routledge as part of the Nineteenth Century Series, it provides essential reading for literary scholars, students of Victorian literature and those interested in the intersection of literature and imperial history.