Routledge Dickens, Family, Authorship - Psychoanalytic Literary Analysis

Dickens, Family, Authorship offers a provocative psychoanalytic examination of Charles Dickens's creative evolution through his novels, letters, journalism, and shorter fiction. This scholarly work explores how Dickens's psychological honesty and imaginative generosity prefigured Freudian and post-Freudian theory decades before their formal articulation. The study focuses on the pivotal decade 1843-1853, a transformative period marked by intense personal and professional upheaval, including the deterioration of his parental relationships and his peripatetic residence across continental Europe. By drawing connections between Dickens's biographical experiences and his fictional portrayals of family dynamics, kinship, and authorship, this analysis illuminates how deeply personal conflicts shaped his literary imagination. Published by Routledge as part of The Nineteenth Century Series, this volume provides literary scholars, students of Victorian literature, and psychoanalytic critics with essential insights into how one of literature's greatest authors channelled his psychological struggles into enduring works of fiction that continue to resonate with readers and theorists alike.