ENGLAND IN THE AGE OF CHARLES DICKENS

by Jeremy Black

Beginning with an overview of the age of Dickens, Professor Jeremy Black guides the reader through the biography and writings of the great man to show how his work not only expressed his experience of Victorian England, but also defined it, for his contemporaries and for generations to come. In some ways for us, Victorian England simply is Dickens’ England. Professor Black considers London as the centre of all but also how Dickens even succeeded in defining the countryside – to say nothing of his effect on concepts of gender and social structure. Then there is government – from the Circumlocution Office to Britain as the supreme imperial power. Dickens describes a culture – popular, middle and élite – and at the same time creates one. It takes a historian of Professor Black’s standing to differentiate between the two and show how they inter-react.

Publisher: UK – Amberley Publishing, October 15, 2021
Rights Sold: World

About Jeremy

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and a prolific lecturer and writer, with over 100 books to his name and the most sustained presentation of British history in recent decades. His interests include military history, British politics, newspaper and cartographic history, and international relations.

Jeremy’s most recent works include: English Nationalism: A Short History (Hurst, 2019), A Brief History of Spain (Robinson, 2019) and A Brief History of Italy (Robinson, 2018).

‘Jeremy Black ought to be a National Treasure. He puts complex issues regarding British and English identity, patriotism, ethnicity and nationhood into their proper historical context, and makes them perfectly comprehensible. We must hope that a grateful nation will finally recognise him as the fine historian he has always been.’

– Andrew Roberts, author of ‘Churchill: Walking with Destiny’