The Moral Art of Dickens: Essays

Product Description
Professor Barbara Hardy is a noted critic of nineteenth-century fiction but her essays on Dickens have hitherto been scattered widely among critical journals and anthologies. The seven studies she has here collected, introduced, and in part revised, together make up a sustained exploration of the moral concern which informs the novelist's work and gives to his portrayal of society and the individual its unique quality. A general discussion of the moral nature of Dickens' art leads to a study of patterns of change and conversion and this in turn to a close examination of four representative novels: Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.
Review
"Her critical concern is with the things that matter, the quality of the art of Dickens's moral vision."—Stephen Gill, Notes & Queries

"As always, Professor Hardy is delightful to read—clear, sensible, perceptive."—Durham University Journal

"Her critical concern is with the things that matter, the quality of the art of Dickens's moral vision."—Stephen Gill, Notes & Queries
About the Author

Barbara Hardy is a poet, autobiographer and novelist, as well as a critic whose books include three on George Eliot and three on Dickens. She is Emeritus Professor at Birkbeck, University of London, Honorary Professor of the University of Wales, Swansea, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy.