Introduction

Much of a muchness is a phrase traditionally employed to signal much of the same, a similarity between two things. This volume shares much of a muchness with previous volumes of DSA. However, in 1865, from the mouth of the Dormouse, Lewis Carroll comically turned the phrase’s meaning into an existential question of identity, pointing out its absurdity and riffing on the meaning of muchness, which, since medieval times, signified abundance, to emphasize individuality, change, growth, and energy (vitality). Reading Lydia Craig’s superb review of Dickens studies for 2024, or the sweeping interview with Robert L. Patten in this volume 57 issue, is an invitation to the reader to appreciate much of a muchness in its fullness of meaning.Craig masterfully digests and categorizes more than 150 publications appearing in 2024. Pure muchness there. Robert Patten covers not only events in his distinguished life as a professor and nineteenth-century scholar, but in doing so the worlds of Dickens studies and the Academy over the past sixty-five-plus years. He names names. One of those names is Robert B. Partlow, who served as DSA’s founding editor. Bob tells the story of the journal’s founding—he was there—and much more about the development of Dickens and Victorian scholarship. Lydia Craig’s essay, with its robust evidence of globalism and digital Dickens, amid so much other fine scholarship, marks the changing state of Dickens studies and the Academy.When the journal adopted its current format back in the day, under new editorship with volume 8, we expanded the journal’s scope to include Victorian novelists beyond Dickens and to cover the history or aesthetics of Victorian fiction. We added review essays/research guides, as we thought of them at the time. Plus, we maintained the journal as a source for longer studies. We pledged to publish “the best of what is being thought, said, and done in the world of Victorian fiction.” While we may have succeeded in doing so at times and over many years, the review essay in this volume clearly demonstrates that great work on Victorian fiction is being done by a wider and wider community and range of publications.Naturally, our journal bent to the times, including a succession of editors. Mike Timko, Fred Kaplan, and Stanley Friedman shepherded many issues and many contributors. We now pay tribute to Anne Humpherys, who completed her term, which began with volume 31 and concluded with our previous volume 56. Quite a run. Thank you, Anne.Anne came to New York from California with an undergraduate degree from Stanford and worked for Time magazine, but as she puts it, “ultimately got her Master’s and PhD from Columbia University.” That led to a position at Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she rose through the ranks to Professor and served as Dean of Arts and Humanities (1987–1992). Her early scholarship focused on Henry Mayhew and included several book publications. Her subsequent scholarly interests included the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain and, later, the impact of changes in divorce law on the novel.Anne has always been “devoted” to detective fiction, and in 1995 contributed a review essay on Victorian detective fiction to DSA, and the following year an essay, “Louisa Grandgrind’s Secret: Marriage and Divorce in Hard Times.” Much earlier, in volume 4, she wrote on “Dickens and Mayhew on the London Poor,” and more recently interviewed Louis James in volume 55 (2024). From 1996 to 2004, she served as deputy director of the PhD program in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she and her colleague, Gerhard Joseph, established a regular gathering of Victorian scholars from far and wide at the Grad Center. They brought the wine (and more). Anne is also widely known for her involvement with the RSVP (Research Society for Victorian Periodicals) and with NEVSA (Northeast Victorian Studies Association). Again, thank you, Anne.We are happy to announce that beginning with this issue, Sophia Hsu will serve as a co-editor. Like Anne, she came from California, via UCLA, then Rice, to New York and CUNY’s Lehman College, where she is an associate professor. And like Anne—curiouser and curiouser—she published in DSA before becoming an editor and is one of the people responsible for maintaining the periodic gatherings of Victorian scholars that Anne established.We wish to express our gratitude once again to those who helped bring this new issue to life, especially the readers, contributors, and authors. At the CUNY Graduate Center, we are pleased to thank and praise our graduate editorial assistants from the PhD Program in English, Katharine Williams, and newly arrived Annastecia Ebisike. We acknowledge the officers and administrators of the PhD program in English, especially Professors Talia Schaffer and Caroline Reitz, and the Academic Program Coordinator Radhika Kashyap, as well as the GC’s business office.The journals department at Penn State University Press remains an able and friendly facilitator, and we embrace our colleagues there: Julie Lambert, journals manager; Astrid Meyer, journals managing editor; and Leah Noel, production manager.—The Editors