Recent Dickens Studies: 2018

Abstract

The Review of Dickens Studies for 2018 examines introductions, articles, partial book chapters, entire book chapters, books of literary criticism, biographical books, entries in reference books, and entire reference books on Charles Dickens. Acknowledging that so-called dominant fields of study in a given year are due, in part, to the vagaries of publishers' and editors' decisions, this article notes that publications in 2018 were dominated by adaptations, biographies, and studies of Bleak House and Great Expectations. Grouping the wealth of interest in two of the fifteen novels necessitated comparable groupings of publications focused on the other novels, and then on other individual works. After accounting for reference books, the remaining categories for consideration revealed themselves to belong to specialized interests and studies. The finalized sequence of headings are Reference Books, Adaptations, Biographies, Thematic Studies across the Novels, Studies of Individual Novels, Other Writings, and Specialized Interests and Studies, with the subtopics Allusions, Dark Tourism, Darwinian Studies, Dickens's Influence, Emigration, Gender and Sexuality, Global Dickens, Imagery, Language, Light, Literary Criticism—Nineteenth Century, Ruins, Sleep, and Urban History.