Preface; Chronology; 1. Dickens the entertainer: 'people must be amuthed'; 2. Dickens and language: 'what I meantersay'; 3. Dickens and the city: 'animate London … inanimate London'; 4. Dickens, gender, and domesticity: 'be it ever … so ghastly … there's no place like it'; 5. Adapting Dickens: 'he do the police in different voices'; Further reading.