How to Study a Charles Dickens Novel - Keith Selby

This book provides a clear method of study which encourages students to construct their own interpretation of any of Dicken's novels. It helps students to identify a novel's major thematic concerns and interests and to argue a case purely from the evidence of the text. But it also moves beyond a straighforwardly thematic analysis to consider how a novel is put together and how it works. This in turn provides students with a way of identifying the distinctiveness of Dickens's fiction and with a way of structuring an intelligent critical response to any of his novels.

KEITH SELBY taught in higher education for seven years. He has published his own poetry, fiction, and many articles and reviews, as well a Screening the Novel: the Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatisation (with Robert Giddings and Chris Wensley, 1988).