Dickens and Race - Tapa dura

'Overall, one can conclude that, while the Dickens that emerges from her study is not always admirable-and is sometimes abhorrent-our understanding of the complex sources of his imaginative world is substantially enhanced by Peters's historically grounded study of his thinking and writing about racial difference.' Oliver S. Buckton, Florida Atlantic University, The European Legacy, Volume 21, 2016 -- .

In the first book-length study of its kind 'Dickens and Race' examines Dickens's complex relationship with race shaped by the twin poles of racial science and fancy. Examining the intersection of the lifelong influence of childhood favourites Robinson Crusoe and Tales of the Arabian Night, and the African travel narratives for which the adult Dickens had a particular 'insatiable relish' with Dickens's interest in science, Dickens and Race offers a unique contextualisation of Dickens's fictional engagements with race in relation to his lesser-known journalism, with wider nineteenth-century debates about differences between humans, with issues of empire, and with the race shows of London. Dickens and Race will be useful to academics, postgraduates and undergraduates who are interested in Charles Dickens, Victorian studies, with racial difference and empire, and childhood. 'A valuable contribution to our understanding of Dickens as a global writer' Dr Cathy Waters, Reader in Victorian Studies at the University of Kent -- .