Recent Dickens Studies: 2022 (Part I)

This article (part one of two) surveys Dickens scholarship and adjacent work with a special emphasis on Dickens Quarterly. The author’s approach was inspired by the alternating micro- and macro- method of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Turning Point 1851, and the personal approach of Annette Federico’s But For You, Dear Stranger (My Reading) and Nick Hornby’s Prince and Dickens: A Particular Kind of Genius. The article identifies these key trends: (1) A turn towards artists and scholars’ personal and autobiographical responses to Dickens’s work/life; (2) a reckoning with race and empire, especially how colonial enterprises are felt in London and in novels’ relationships; (3) places and spaces, including how buildings can communicate history or hold meaning; (4) charges of anti-Semitism and treatment of Jews; (5) intense, narrowly focused scholarship on topics like etymology, fungi, rot, historical happenings, both major (Crystal Palace) or minor (a Duke’s balloon trip).