Selected Short Fiction (5 page)

From Gabriel Grub's reformed conviction that ‘it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all' to George Silverman's anguished perception that the world he so steadfastly renounces is neither understanding nor just, the short writings included here reveal Dickens's increasingly pessimistic preoccupation with the problems of dwelling in society and the divisions within the individual self. Viewed from one direction, they reflect the growing loss of illusions familiar to readers of his later novels, yet they also reveal startling flashes of comic, holiday exuberance with late characters from the Christmas numbers like the Boy at Mugby and Mrs Lirriper or Doctor Marigold, the inherently generous lover of material possessions, conceived just after the sombre manifestations of human greed in
Our Mutual Friend.
Forster remarked about Doctor Marigold's monologue that ‘It expressed, as perfectly as anything he has ever done, that which constitutes in itself very much of the genius of all his writing, the wonderful neighbourhood in this life of ours, of serious and humorous things; the laughter close to the pathos, but never touching it with ridicule.' In varying ways, this assessment suggests the most important element of his friend's short fiction. Here, far more freely than in his novels, Dickens felt himself able to unleash the unique combination of talents which formed ‘the genius of all his writing', to arouse pathos, to evoke laughter, and to attempt to hold the two in equilibrium. Here he showed most intensely the quality of fancy, which he never firmly defined yet sensed as a primary aspect ofhis art.Thus, he felt quite free to escape momentarily from actuality or soften it with emotion, to transform fact through the power of a perceiving eye, and to experiment with techniques of narrating perspectives on the ordinary world. In the process, he explored corners of the human mind — penetrating, as all our nightmares and daydreams do, beyond the realm of possible experience, capturing evanescent impressions of the moment, demonstrating the way in which our personalities are inexorably manifested in our words. At their best, the results not only illuminate the novels that have paradoxically overshadowed them; they are multicoloured lights which are fascinating in themselves.

THE standard biographies of Dickens are those by Peter Ackroyd,
Dickens
(London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990); John Forster,
The Life of Charles Dickens,
ed. J. W. T. Ley (London: Cecil Palmer, 1928); Edgar Johnson,
Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph,
2 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952); and Fred Kaplan,
Dickens: A Biography
(New York: William Morrow, 1988). The most comprehensive collection of Dickens's letters is the twelve-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey and others, and published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford (1965-2002). Some of the short pieces included in the present selection also appear in the four-volume
Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism,
edited by Michael Slater, with John Drew in the last volume, published in Great Britain by J. M. Dent (1993-2000) and in the United States by Ohio State University Press. The following studies offer useful insights from diverse directions into the subject of Dickens's short fiction.

 

 

BARRY D. BART, “‘George Silverman's Explanation”',
Dickensian,
vol. 60 (1964), pp. 48-51.

JOHN BUTT, ‘Dickens's Christmas Books',
Pope, Dickens and Others
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969), pp. 127-48.

JOHN BUTT and KATHLEEN TILLOTSON, Dickens
at Work
(London: Methuen, 1957). This is a discussion of Dickens's methods of composition which includes a chapter dealing with his revisions to
Sketches by Boz.

G. K. CHESTERTON,
Charles Dickens
(London: Methuen, 1906).

P[HILIP] A. W. COLLINS, ‘Queen Mab's Chariot Among the Steam Engines: Dickens and “Fancy”',
English Studies,
vol. 42 (1961), pp. 78-90.

PHILIP COLLINS,
Dickens and Crime,
2nd ed. (1964; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968).

PERCY FITZGERALD,
Memories of Charles Dickens with an Account of ‘Household Words' and ‘All the Year Round' and of the Contributors Thereto
(London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1913).

DUDLEY FLAMM, ‘The Prosecutor Within: Dickens's Final Explanation',
Dickensian,
vol. 66 (1970), pp. 16-23 (a discussion of ‘George Silverman's Explanation').

GEORGE H. FORD,
Dickens and His Readers: Aspects of Novel-Criticism since 1836
(1955; reprinted New York: Norton, 1965).

GEORGE H. FORD, ‘Introduction' to
David Copperfield
(Boston, 1958), reprinted in
The Dickens Critics,
ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961), pp. 349-65.

SIGMUND FREUD, ‘The “Uncanny”',
Collected Papers,
authorized translation under the supervision of Joan Riviere, vol. IV (1925; reprinted London: Hogarth Press, 1953), pp. 368-407.

RUTH F. GLANCY,
Dickens's Christmas Books, Christmas Stories, and Other Short Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography
(New York: Garland, 1985).

GERALD G. GRUBB, ‘The Personal and Literary Relationships of Dickens and Poe',
Nineteenth-Century Fiction,
vol. 5 (1950) part 1, pp. 1 — 22; part 2, pp. 101-20; part 3, pp. 209-21.

ROBERT HAMILTON, ‘The Creative Eye: Dickens as Essayist',
Dickensian,
vol. 64 (1968), pp. 36-42.

BARBARA HARDY, ‘Dickens's Storytellers',
Dickensian,
vol. 69 (1973), 71-78 (primarily about Dickens's novels but relevant to his short fiction).

WENDELL V. HARRIS, ‘English Short Fiction in the Nineteenth Century',
Studies in Short Fiction,
vol. 6 (1968), pp. 1-93.

ROBERT LANGBAUM,
The Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition
(1957; reprinted New York: Norton, 1963).

J. HILLIS MILLER, ‘The Fiction of Realism:
Sketches by Boz, Oliver Twist,
and Cruikshank's Illustrations',
Dickens Centennial Essays,
ed. Ada Nisbet and Blake Nevius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 85-153.

SYLVÈRE MONOD,
Dickens romancier
(Paris: Hachette, 1953); translated and revised by the author as
Dickens the Novelist
[Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968).

GEORGE ORWELL, ‘Charles Dickens',
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell,
ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 454-504.

ROBERT L. PATTEN, ‘“The Story-weaver at His Loom”: Dickens and the Beginning of
The Old Curiosity Shop', Dickens the Craftsman,
ed. Robert B. Partlow Jr (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), pp. 44-64, 191-3, 205.

ROBERT L. PATTEN (ed.), Charles Dickens,
The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).

MARIO PRAZ,
The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction,
translated by Angus Davidson (London: Oxford University Press, 1956).

MICHAEL SLATER (ed.), Charles Dickens,
The Christmas Books,
2 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971).

HARRY STONE, ‘Dickens's Tragic Universe: “George Silverman's Explanation”',
Studies in Philology,
vol. 55 (1958), pp. 86-97.

HARRY STONE, ‘Dickens and Interior Monologue',
Philological Quarterly,
vol. 38 (1959), pp. 52-65.

HARRY STONE, ‘Dickens' Artistry and
The Haunted Man', South Atlantic Quarterly,
vol. 61 (1962), pp. 492-505.

HARRY STONE (ed.),
Charles Dickens' Uncollected Writings from ‘Household Words' 1850-1859
, 2 vols. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968). This is an important collection of Dickens's ‘composite' writings as well as a valuable source of information about his editorial policies and the periodical context which gave rise to much of his short fiction.

HARRY STONE, ‘The Unknown Dickens: With a Sampling of Uncollected Writings',
Dickens Studies Annual,
ed. Robert B. Partlow, Jr, vol. I (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), pp. 1-22, 275 — 6.

HARRY STONE,
Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Novel-Making
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1979).

HARVEY PETER SUCKSMITH, ‘The Secret of Immediacy: Dickens' Debt to the Tale of Terror in
Blackwood's', Nineteenth-Century Fiction,
vol. 26 (1971), pp. 145-57.

DEBORAH ALLEN THOMAS, ‘The Equivocal Explanation of Dickens' George Silverman',
Dickens Studies Annual,
ed. Robert B. Partlow, Jr, vol. III (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), pp. 134-43, 239-40.

DEBORAH A[LLEN] THOMAS, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Numbers of
Household Words
and
All the Year Round,
1850- 1867',
Dickensian,
part 1, vol. 69 (1973), pp. 163-72; part 2, vol. 70 (1974), pp. 21-29.

DEBORAH A[LLEN] THOMAS,
Dickens and the Short Story
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).

DOROTHY VAN GHENT, ‘The Dickens World: A View from Todgers's,'
Sewanee Review,
vol. 58 (1950), pp. 419-38; reprinted in
The Dickens Critics,
ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961), pp. 213-32).

VIRGINIA WOOLF,
David Copperfield', Collected Essays,
vol. I (London: Hogarth Press, 1966), pp. 191-5.

 

Excerpts from Chesterton's and Orwell's discussions of Dickens and part of Poe's review of
The Old Curiosity Shop
(excluding his discussion of the machinery
of Master Humphrey's Clock)
are reprinted in
The Dickens Critics,
edited by George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961). Portions of Orwell's and Chesterton's treatments of Dickens appear in
Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology,
edited by Stephen Wall (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970), along with Virginia Woolf's essay, and selections from Forster's
Life of Charles Dickens,
Van Ghent's 1953 study of
The English Novel: Form and Function
(analysing the style of
Great Expectations
), Butt and Tillotson's
Dickens at Work,
Stone's ‘Dickens and Interior Monologue', and Monod's
Dickens the Novelist
(dealing with
David Copperfield).

THE pieces presented here, which span Dickens's literary career, stem from a variety of locations. Some were collected and revised in successive editions during his lifetime; others were allowed to lapse into obscurity and added to his collected works only after his death in 1870.

‘The Story of the Goblins who stole a Sexton' and ‘The Baron of Grogzwig' are taken from the 1867 texts of
Pickwick Papers
and
Nicholas Nickleby
which Dickens prepared for the Charles Dickens Edition of his writings, the edition which incorporates his last, although sometimes haphazard, revisions before his death. The selections from
Sketches by Boz
and
The Uncommercial Traveller
as well as from
American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces
(‘A Christmas Tree', ‘A Flight', ‘Our School', and ‘Lying Awake') are also based on the Charles Dickens Edition (1868). The texts of ‘To Be Read at Dusk' and ‘George Silverman's Explanation' are those of the first editions - the
Keepsake
(1852) and the
Atlantic Monthly
(1868). ‘George Silverman's Explanation' was serialized in the January, February, and March 1868 issues of the
Atlantic Monthly,
and the breaks between parts are indicated here by asterisks. ‘A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second', with Cattermole's illustration, follows the text of the first volume edition of
Master Humphrey's Clock
(1840-41).

The selections from
Somebody's Luggage, Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings, Mrs Lirriper's Legacy, Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions,
and
Mugby Junction
are based on the texts of the extra Christmas numbers of
All the Year Round,
1862-6. As Harry Stone has pointed out in his edition of Charles
Dickens' Uncollected Writings from ‘Household Words' 1850-1859,
Dickens modified these pieces along with some from
Household Words
for the special Diamond Edition of his works, published in the United States in 1867 at the time of a visit by Dickens,
^s
and an argument might thus be made for adhering to this version. However, the
All the Year Round
texts containing Dickens's handwritten changes now located in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library indicate that Dickens performed some drastic surgery in making his selections for the Diamond Edition. For example, the framework of
Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions
becomes a single monologue; the word ‘prescriptions' vanishes from the tide along with the humorous chapter headings - changes which weaken the joke about Marigold's medical skills on which the work is based; and the extended comic allusion to the
All the Year Round
format at the end of the first section disappears. It is difficult to appreciate these works fully apart from their original contexts, and a modem edition of the complete Christmas numbers from
Household Words
and
All the Year Round
is needed. In the meantime, the present selections are based on the first versions of these unusual pieces in order to recapture, as far as possible, their original vitality.

In each case, the specified text has been consistently followed, although a few obvious printer's errors have been silently corrected, and a few typographic conventions have been amended (for example, the full stops which Dickens placed after titles have been deleted). Likewise, in keeping with Penguin house-style, single quotation marks have been used first, and full stops after terms like Mr have been omitted. There is inconsistency between the various texts in such matters as italicization of foreign words and some spellings: these have been left in their original forms. Asterisked footnotes are originals.