Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Wanted to Know About Dickens
Review: The Oxford Readers Companion to Charles Dickens serves as an alphabetical tour of the life of the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era. With entries ranging from "A Becket, Gilbert" to "Yates, Frederick" this wonderfully engrossing reference book offers readers information about every aspect of the life, work, and historical environment in which the great man created magic. From analytical entries about every novel to biographical sketches of his friends and foes, this book truly brings Dickens to vivid and enjoyable life. No scholar of the 19th century novel should miss this comprenhensive work.

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Wanted to Know About Dickens
Review: The Oxford Readers Companion to Charles Dickens serves as an alphabetical tour of the life of the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era. With entries ranging from "A Becket, Gilbert" to "Yates, Frederick" this wonderfully engrossing reference book offers readers information about every aspect of the life, work, and historical environment in which the great man created magic. From analytical entries about every novel to biographical sketches of his friends and foes, this book truly brings Dickens to vivid and enjoyable life. No scholar of the 19th century novel should miss this comprenhensive work.

Rating:
Summary: Strongly recommend the hardback rather than the paperback
Review: This is an essential reference book for any serious student or reader of Dickens, though I would strongly recommend that one take the extra effort to obtain a copy in hardcover rather than paper. The two editions are entirely different productions. If one had held both editions on one's hand, the differences are blatant, but merely reading about them will not reveal how profoundly they vary from one another. The paperback has a single virtue: price. It is cheaper by a considerable margin. Looking at the pagination, one might imagine that the paper edition contains everything found in the hardback. The paper edition runs to 675 pages, while the hardback runs to 654. The hardback, however, in addition to being a far more attractive volume and containing some sections in a larger, more easily read typeface, contains a host of photographs, illustrations, and maps that greatly enhance the value of the volume. I would like to point out that while the hardback lists for $55.00, it can persistently be found on Amazon for far less than that. I obtained my copy remaindered on Amazon for $16.95, which is the same as the list price for the paperback.

I can't say enough about the quality of the articles in this volume. Top Dickens scholars from around the world have been recruited to write on a host of subjects, in particular on subjects that will cast light on the world in which Dickens lived and about which he wrote. Although his books are certainly not neglected, the emphasis is as much on Dickens and his world as on Dickens and his books. The goal of the book is clearly an understanding of Dickens in context, with the added belief that knowing his context will immeasurably deepen one's enjoyment and understanding of his works.

My lone complaint with the book is the book does not contain a usable index or list of characters. There is an alphabetical list of all characters in Dickens's books at the end, but such a list only tells you what work a character appears in, not who they are. If you are dipping back into a novel of Dickens with the intent of enjoying a chapter or two (as opposed to rereading the entire work from beginning to end), one might not remember whom a particular individual is. It would have been nice to have a one or two line explanation of whom each character is, in addition to what work in which they appeared. I believe this would have enhanced the value of this as a reference work.

The inherent problem of any reference work like this will be the degree to which it is usable. There is a host of information, but how can it be accessed and recovered? This volume suffers to some degree, but Paul Schlicke has gone to great lengths to multiply the number of aides to teasing out the book's information. The articles are organized alphabetically, but there is a wealth of indexes. There is, for instance, a "Classified Contents List," that has headings such as "Dickens's Reputation," and subheadings under that like "Critics and scholars of Dickens" and "Scholarly and critical approaches to Dickens," with titles of articles under each. By reading those articles, one finds the information one needs. There is some overlap with the book's index (which tends to refer to article titles rather than page numbers--perhaps that was in order to accommodate both the hardback and paperback editions, which have different pagination) and the "Classified Contents List," but these provide two different approaches to obtaining the information one needs.

This is not the only book on Dickens that a reader of Dickens would want to own. One would certainly want to refer to a biography by someone like Peter Ackroyd or Edgar Johnson, or perhaps a critical appreciation like that of G. K. Chesterton. But I would definitely place it on the short list of books that one would like to own.

Rating:
Summary: Strongly recommend the hardback rather than the paperback
Review: This is an essential reference book for any serious student or reader of Dickens, though I would strongly recommend that one take the extra effort to obtain a copy in hardcover rather than paper. The two editions are entirely different productions. If one had held both editions on one's hand, the differences are blatant, but merely reading about them will not reveal how profoundly they vary from one another. The paperback has a single virtue: price. It is cheaper by a considerable margin. Looking at the pagination, one might imagine that the paper edition contains everything found in the hardback. The paper edition runs to 675 pages, while the hardback runs to 654. The hardback, however, in addition to being a far more attractive volume and containing some sections in a larger, more easily read typeface, contains a host of photographs, illustrations, and maps that greatly enhance the value of the volume. I would like to point out that while the hardback lists for $55.00, it can persistently be found on Amazon for far less than that. I obtained my copy remaindered on Amazon for $16.95, which is the same as the list price for the paperback.

I can't say enough about the quality of the articles in this volume. Top Dickens scholars from around the world have been recruited to write on a host of subjects, in particular on subjects that will cast light on the world in which Dickens lived and about which he wrote. Although his books are certainly not neglected, the emphasis is as much on Dickens and his world as on Dickens and his books. The goal of the book is clearly an understanding of Dickens in context, with the added belief that knowing his context will immeasurably deepen one's enjoyment and understanding of his works.

My lone complaint with the book is the book does not contain a usable index or list of characters. There is an alphabetical list of all characters in Dickens's books at the end, but such a list only tells you what work a character appears in, not who they are. If you are dipping back into a novel of Dickens with the intent of enjoying a chapter or two (as opposed to rereading the entire work from beginning to end), one might not remember whom a particular individual is. It would have been nice to have a one or two line explanation of whom each character is, in addition to what work in which they appeared. I believe this would have enhanced the value of this as a reference work.

The inherent problem of any reference work like this will be the degree to which it is usable. There is a host of information, but how can it be accessed and recovered? This volume suffers to some degree, but Paul Schlicke has gone to great lengths to multiply the number of aides to teasing out the book's information. The articles are organized alphabetically, but there is a wealth of indexes. There is, for instance, a "Classified Contents List," that has headings such as "Dickens's Reputation," and subheadings under that like "Critics and scholars of Dickens" and "Scholarly and critical approaches to Dickens," with titles of articles under each. By reading those articles, one finds the information one needs. There is some overlap with the book's index (which tends to refer to article titles rather than page numbers--perhaps that was in order to accommodate both the hardback and paperback editions, which have different pagination) and the "Classified Contents List," but these provide two different approaches to obtaining the information one needs.

This is not the only book on Dickens that a reader of Dickens would want to own. One would certainly want to refer to a biography by someone like Peter Ackroyd or Edgar Johnson, or perhaps a critical appreciation like that of G. K. Chesterton. But I would definitely place it on the short list of books that one would like to own.