Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

Dickens’s Working Notes for 'Dombey and Son'

  • Tony Laing (author)
Metadata
TitleDickens’s Working Notes for 'Dombey and Son'
ContributorTony Laing (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0092
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0092
Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CopyrightTony Laing
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Publication placeCambridge, UK
Published on2017-09-04
ISBN978-1-78374-223-3 (Paperback)
978-1-78374-224-0 (Hardback)
978-1-78374-225-7 (PDF)
978-1-80064-511-0 (HTML)
978-1-78374-614-9 (XML)
978-1-78374-226-4 (EPUB)
978-1-78374-227-1 (MOBI)
Short abstractThis critical edition of the working notes for Dombey and Son (1848) is ideal for readers who wish to know more about Dickens’s craft and creativity. Drawing on the author’s manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London—and containing hyperlinked facsimiles—Dickens’s Working Notes for Dombey and Son offers a new digital transcription with a fresh commentary by Tony Laing. Unique and innovative, this is the only edition to make Dickens’s working methods visible.
Long abstractThis critical edition of the working notes for Dombey and Son (1848) is ideal for readers who wish to know more about Dickens’s craft and creativity. Drawing on the author’s manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London—and containing hyperlinked facsimiles—Dickens’s Working Notes for Dombey and Son offers a new digital transcription with a fresh commentary by Tony Laing. Unique and innovative, this is the only edition to make Dickens’s working methods visible. John Mullan has called Dombey and Son Dickens’s "first great novel.” Set amid the coming of the railways, it tells the story of a powerful man—typical of the commercial and banking magnates of the period—and the effect he has on his family and those around him. Laing presents the worksheets and other materials (transcribed for the first time) that together grew into the novel. Reading the book alongside this edition of the notes will enlarge the understanding of Dickens’s art among teachers, students, researchers and Dickens enthusiasts. As cultural tastes shift from print to digital, Dickens’s Working Notes will help preserve Dickens’s work for the future. The magnifying and linking functions of the edition mean that the notes are more easily and usefully—not to mention accessibly—exhibited here than elsewhere. Laing gives present-day readers the chance not only to recapture the effect of serial publication but also to gain greater insight into the making of a work which by general agreement, and Dickens’s own admission, has a special place in his development as a novelist. This close analysis of Dickens’s working notes uses Zoomify, allowing the reader of the HTML edition to greatly magnify the manuscript photographs and enabling more detailed examination.
Print length224 pages (viii + 216)
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Dimensions210 x 16 x 273 mm | 8.25" x 0.61" x 10.75" (Paperback)
210 x 14 x 273 mm | 8.25" x 0.56" x 10.75" (Hardback)
Weight1498g | 52.84oz (Paperback)
1708g | 60.25oz (Hardback)
Media62 illustrations
2 tables
OCLC Number1167155091
LCCN2019452597
BIC
  • DSK
BISAC
  • LIT004120
  • LIT024040
LCC
  • PR4588
Keywords
  • critical edition
  • working notes
  • Dombey and Son
  • transcription
  • commentary
  • worksheets
Contents

Foreword

(pp. 3–6)
  • Tony Laing

Abbreviations, references and cross-references

(pp. 7–8)
  • Tony Laing

Section 1. Introduction to the working notes

(pp. 9–14)
  • Tony Laing

Section 2. Transcribing the worksheets

(pp. 15–26)
  • Tony Laing

Section 3. Procedures in the worksheets

(pp. 27–32)
  • Tony Laing

Section 4. Introduction to the worksheets

(pp. 33–36)
  • Tony Laing

Section 5. The worksheets

(pp. 37–126)
  • Tony Laing

Section 6. Overview

(pp. 127–158)
  • Tony Laing

Afterword

(pp. 159–164)
  • Tony Laing

Appendices

(pp. 165–194)
  • Tony Laing

Endnotes

(pp. 197–214)
  • Tony Laing
Locations
PaperbackLanding pagePublisher Website
HardbackLanding pagePublisher Website
PDFLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
Landing pageFull text URLOAPEN
Landing pageFull text URL
Landing pageFull text URL
Landing pageFull text URLINTERNET ARCHIVE
HTMLLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
XMLLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
Landing pageFull text URL
EPUBLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
MOBILanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
References
  1. Ackroyd, Peter, Dickens: A Memoir of Middle Age (London: Vintage Books, 2012).
  2. ––– Dickens (London: Sinclair–Stevenson Ltd., 1990).
  3. Butt, John and Tillotson, Kathleen, Dickens at Work, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Methuen, 1968).
  4. Churchill, R. C., A Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism (London Macmillan Press, 1975)
  5. Clark, Lewis Gaylord, ‘Charles Dickens’, Harpers New Monthly Magazine, vol.25 (1862), 376–80.
  6. Collins, Philip (ed.), Charles Dickens The Public Readings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198125013.book.1
  7. ––– Dickens Interviews and Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1991).
  8. Deane, Bradley, The Making of the Victorian Novelist: Anxieties of Authorship in the Mass Market (London: Routledge, 2003).
  9. Dickens, Charles, Bleak House, eds. George Ford and Sylvère Monod (New York: Norton, 1977).
  10. ––– Dickens Journals Online (University of Buckingham), http://www.djo.org.uk/household-words.html
  11. ––– Dombey and Son (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848).
  12. ––– Dombey and Son, ed. Alan Horsman, Clarendon Dickens series (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198124917.book.1
  13. ––– Dombey and Son, ed. Alan Horsman, Oxford World’s Classics series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
  14. ––– Dombey and Son, ed. Andrew Sanders (London: Penguin Classics, 2002).
  15. ––– Dombey and Son, ebook 821, Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/821 (released 1 February 1997)
  16. ––– Letters of Charles Dickens, Pilgrim edition, eds. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson and Madeline House, et al., 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982–2002).
  17. ––– Little Dorrit, eds. Stephen Wall and Helen Small, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Classics, 2003).
  18. ––– Our Mutual Friend, Oxford Illustrated Dickens series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).
  19. ––– Pickwick Papers, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00121338
  20. Dolby, George, Charles Dickens as I Knew Him (London: Everett & Co., 1912).
  21. Forster, John, Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J. W. T. Ley (London: Cecil Palmer, 1926).
  22. ––– Life of Charles Dickens, 3 vols. in 2 (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1875), ebook 25851, Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25851 (released 20 June 2008)
  23. Gager, Valerie L., Shakespeare and Dickens: The Dynamics of Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
  24. Hammerton, J. A. (ed.), The Dickens Companion, Charles Dickens Library, vol.18 (London: Educational Book Co. Ltd., 1910).
  25. Hardy, Barbara, Dickens and Creativity (London: Continuum, 2008), https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474211321
  26. Hartley, Jenny, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women (London: Methuen, 2008).
  27. Herring, Paul D., ‘Number Plans for Dombey and Son’, Modern Philology 64 (1966), 151–87.
  28. James, Henry, ‘Preface to The Tragic Muse’, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20085/20085-h/20085-h.htm#PREFACE
  29. Johnson, Edgar D. H., Charles Dickens: An Introduction to his Novels (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
  30. Litvack, Leon, Charles Dickens’s ‘Dombey and Son’: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: AMS Press, 1999).
  31. Low, Annette, ‘The Conservation of Charles Dickens’ Manuscripts’, V&A Conservation Journal, no.9 (October 1993), http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/journals/conservation-journal/issue-09/
  32. Monod, Sylvère, Dickens the Novelist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968).
  33. O’Gorman, Francis (ed.), A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
  34. Patten, Robert L., Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford University Press, 1978; reprinted by The Dickens Project, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1991).
  35. Philpotts, Trey, The Companion to Dombey and Son (Great Britain: Liverpool University Press, 2014).
  36. Purton, Valerie, Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition (London: Anthem Press, 2012), https://doi.org/10.7135/UPO9780857289070
  37. Schlicke, Paul (ed.), The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780196662532.001.0001
  38. Slater, Michael, Dickens and Women (London: J. M. Dent & Son, 1983).
  39. ––– Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
  40. ––– The Great Charles Dickens Scandal (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012).
  41. Smith, Grahame, Charles Dickens A Literary Life (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24489-8
  42. Stone, Harry, Dickens and the Invisible World (London: Macmillan Press, 1979), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05072-7
  43. ––– (ed.), Dickens’ Working Notes for His Novels (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
  44. Sucksmith, H. P., ‘Dickens at Work on Bleak House’, Renaissance and Modern Studies 9 (1965), 47–85.
  45. Tomalin, Claire, The Invisible Woman (London: Viking Penguin, 1990).
  46. Turner, Mark W., ‘“Telling of My Weekly Doings”: The Material Culture of the Victorian Novel’, in: A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. Francis O’Gorman (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp.113–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9781405103206.2004.x
  47. Wall, Stephen (ed.), Charles Dickens A Critical Anthology (London: Penguin Books, 1970).