When Dickens was nineteen years old, he wrote a poem for Maria Beadnell, the young woman he wished to marry. The poem imagined Maria as a welcoming landlady offering lodgings to let. Almost forty years later, Dickens died, leaving his final novel unfinished - in its last scene, another landlady sets breakfast down for her enigmatic lodger. These kinds of characters are everywhere in Dickens's writing. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction: The Lodger World explores the significance of tenancy in his fiction. In nineteenth century Britain the vast majority of people rented, rather than owned, their homes. Instead of keeping to themselves, they shared space - renting, lodging, taking lodgers in, or simply living side-by-side in a crowded modern city. Charles Dickens explored both the chaos and the unexpected harmony to be found in rented spaces, the loneliness and sociability, the interactions between cohabitants, the complex gender dynamics at play, and the relationship between space and money. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction demonstrates that a cosy, secluded home life was beyond the reach of most Victorian Londoners, and considers Dickens's nuanced conception of domesticity. Tenancy maintained an enduring hold upon his imagination, giving him new stories to tell and offering him a set of models to think about authorship. He celebrated the fact that unassuming houses brim with narrative potential: comedies, romances, and detective plots take place behind their doors. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction: The Lodger World wedges these doors open.

About the Author
Ushashi Dasgupta is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oxford and Jonathan and Julia Aisbitt Fellow of English at Pembroke College.

Reviews
Dasgupta makes an exciting and convincing argument that the ways in which Dickens creates characters, organizes space, and generates vast, interconnected urban plots can be connected to particular material experiences of life in rented lodgings. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction will be of lasting interest to scholars interested in domesticity and finance, gender and (especially) masculinity, and architecture and space. * Molly Boggs, Randolph College, VICTORIAN STUDIES *
Overall, Dasgupta offers an innovative, highly original argument. Her clear prose style and judicious use of criticism ensure the study is accessible to nonspecialists. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * R. D. Morrison, Morehead State University, CHOICE *
Ushashi Dasgupta's very good book will reinvigorate and deepen our thinking... especially in relation to the fine historical detail of leased or rented housing in Dickens's England. * Dominic Rainsford, Aarhus University, Dickens Quarterly *
Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction amply proves the ubiquity of rental culture in Dickens's oeuvre through a study that is as rich, diffuse, and fascinating as the lodger world it explores. * Shari Hodges Holt, Modern Philology *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198859116
Author Ushashi Dasgupta
Format Hardback
Page Count 324
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 672g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 163mm * 24mm