Introduction

“O, stay and hear, your true love’s coming, That can sing both high and low.”

—Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 3

The enduring, widespread appeal of the works of Dickens may in part be attributed to the great variety of his interests and styles: satire and sentiment, farce and pathos, the topical and the universal. The range of different subjects and approaches in essays in this number reflects this variety.

Every issue of DSA depends on the generosity of both those authors who submit their articles for our consideration and the scholars willing and able to provide detailed recommendations that assist the editors and also our contributors.

This number includes Edward Guiliano’s extensive survey of recent studies of another Victorian whose fiction still engages readers in this new century, Lewis Carroll. The survey demonstrates that Carroll, like Dickens, continues to inspire an impressive range of critical approaches.

We once more express our gratitude for important practical assistance received from the following administrators at CUNY’s Graduate Center: Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Joy Connolly; Ph.D. Program in English Executive Officer Eric Lott; and Nancy Silverman, Assistant Program Officer, Ph.D. Program in English.

In addition, we greatly appreciate the continued assistance provided by John O. Jordan, Director of the Dickens Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Renee A. Fox, Co-Director; Courtney Mahaney, Assistant Director of The Dickens Project; and Jon Michael Varese, the Project’s Director of Outreach. Ms. Mahaney places on the Dickens Project’s website the tables of contents for volumes 1–27 of DSA, as well as abstracts for subsequent volumes. (These items can be found on the Project’s website: <http://dickens.ucsc.edu>. Look under “Resources” to find Dickens Studies Annual.)

Extremely generous grants from the EM Foundation have allowed Dickens Studies Annual to heed Mr. Micawber’s memorable warning about the peril of spending more than can be afforded.

We are happy to acknowledge our indebtedness to Wei Wu, a doctoral student at the Graduate Center, who has been our editorial assistant for this number, for his consistently efficient and reliable help in performing many different kinds of tasks.

Finally, we thank the following members of the Journals Department at Penn State University Press for their encouragement, guidance, and support: Diana L. Pesek, Journals Manager; Julie Lambert, Production Coordinator; Heather Smith, Journals Marketing Manager; and Astrid Meyer, Journals Managing Editor.

—The Editors