Rebuilding Charles Dickens’s Wreck and Rethinking the Collaborative

Studying The Wreck of the Golden Mary in its entirety, this essay complicates hierarchical models of collaboration and showcases the powerful polyvocal potential of periodical forms such as the Christmas number. The Wreck, edited and compiled by Charles Dickens in 1856, includes the writing of five other authors. Restoring the links between The Wreck’s parts not only recuperates the dialogic aspects of the original narrative but also highlights how a focus on individual authorship can hinder interpretive approaches to collaborative periodical writing.