Dickens
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the 19th century literary giant, Charles Dickens. George Bernard Shaw said of Little Dorrit that it was “more seditious than Das Kapital”. We can all think of classic Dickens; the gin palaces, grimy narrow lanes, shoe shine boys sitting in the gutters and the terrible city smog. Silas Wake with his peg leg, young Oliver asking for more. But were these figures fictional agents for the radical change that Bernard Shaw suggests? Or was Dickens a great caricaturist but really a conservative at heart? What kind of person was the man Charles Dickens? And what is his political and literary legacy to our age?
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Guests
- Rosemary Ashton
10 episodes
Professor of English at University College London -
Michael Slater No other episodes
Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London - John Bowen
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Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Keele
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Programme ID: p00547hx
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00547hx
Auto-category: 823.8 (English fiction, 1837-1899)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello George Bernard Shaw said of Little Dorrit that it was quote more seditious than Das Kapital unquote.