{"title":"The Dickens Companions","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve deeper into Dickens with these insightful companions, perfect for students, scholars, and avid readers alike. Unlock new perspectives on his timeless novels, characters, and the Victorian era.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"companion-to-a-tale-of-two-cities-book-andrew-sanders-9781903206140","title":"The Companion to A Tale of Two Cities","description":"\u003cem\u003eA Tale of Two Cities, \u003c\/em\u003e published originally in 1859, remains one of Charles Dickens's consistently popular works, admired as much for its succinct plot as for its vivid setting in the French Revolution. Dickens himself thought it the best story he had ever written. This Companion, by concentrating on the factual, reveals the great care Dickens took with the planning and preparation of his story and its roots in the work of Thomas Carlyle, one of the most influential thinkers of the Victorian age. It also explores aspects of Dickens's life. The Companion identifies the multitude of allusions to what Dickens often regarded as the whims of eighteenth-century justice, religion, philosophy, fashion and society. The 'Companion to \u003cem\u003eA Tale of Two Cities\u003c\/em\u003e' provides the modern reader with both fundamental sources of information and a fascintating account of the creation of a complex historical novel. It can be read alongside any edition of the novel.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49641771270417,"sku":"GOR006425666","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49725655843089,"sku":"CIN1903206146VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733716082961,"sku":"NGR9781903206140","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1903206146.jpg?v=1750900221"},{"product_id":"companion-to-great-expectations-book-david-paroissien-9781873403570","title":"The Companion to Great Expectations","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734227558673,"sku":"NGR9781873403570","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52110561935633,"sku":"GOR014464949","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1873403577.jpg?v=1751124395"},{"product_id":"companion-to-little-dorrit-book-trey-philpotts-9781873403853","title":"The Companion to Little Dorrit","description":"The Companion to Little Dorrit provides the most extensive information yet available on the political, cultural, and personal backgrounds of a novel that today is considered a central text of Dickens's 'dark' period, and a major work of nineteenth-century literature. The Companion emphasizes the importance of the Crimean War through both the complex political rhetorical surrounding the Circumlocution Office, and Dickens's depiction of Daniel Doyce, as well as through many other textual details. The Companion also makes important distinctions between administrative reform and civil service reform, and points to differences between boards of inquiry, committees and reports that conventional wisdom has frequently confused. Of special interest are the notes on the political figures of the day - Lord Palmerston, Lord Aberdeen, Sir Charles Treveylan and Austen Henry Layard, among many others - and on the debates in the House of Commons that were reported by The Times and that eventually found expression in Little Dorrit.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734749323537,"sku":"NGR9781873403853","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1873403852.jpg?v=1751027027"},{"product_id":"companion-to-dombey-and-son-book-trey-philpotts-9781781381274","title":"The Companion to Dombey and Son","description":"Dombey and Son (1846–48), Dickens’s seventh novel, stands at the mid-point of his career. It was begun in Switzerland after a break from near-continuous novel writing and bears the hallmarks of its long gestation and Dickens’s deepening engagement with the many cross-currents shaping Britain’s social, cultural and political life. Predominant among them are public debates about the need to provide schooling for young children, ethical questions prompted by the demolition of neighbourhoods to make way for railways, the discussion of sanitary reforms to improve the nation’s health, and divergent responses to prostitution and other crimes inextricably linked with poverty, illiteracy and deprivation. Drawing on contemporary documentation, Dickens’s letters, his journalism and the novelist’s own personal involvement with schemes to improve the lives of the poor, this Companion to Dombey and Son offers an authoritative and exhaustive study of the many contemporary contexts that inform Dickens’s panoramic examination of mid-Victorian life.  Of equal importance and intimately connected with the novel’s engagement with public issues is the moral thread that binds the whole, a familial story about pride and the pursuit of riches. Private matters accordingly receive comparable attention as Dickens exposes some of the consequences of mid-century domestic ideology, examining the nursing of infants, the education of young children, and the pressure on both men and women to marry.  In compelling scenes artfully interwoven, the story of the novel’s prosperous merchant unfolds, in language, as the annotations show, enriched from fairy tale, science and pseudo-science, archaeology, popular and classical literature, poetry, the Bible and voyages and travels. Dombey and Son also illuminates in its extended portrait of a Lear-like figure truths about loss and love central to Dickens’s fiction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736656945425,"sku":"NGR9781781381274","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50557506584849,"sku":"GOR013998936","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1781381275.jpg?v=1750994382"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/the-dickens-companions-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}