Television and movies, not libraries or scholarship, have made Charles Dickens the most important unread novelist in English. In addition to the millions of people already deploying the word "Dickensian" to describe their own and others' lives, many more who have never read Dickens are familiar with the term. They know of him because they have access to over a century of adaptations of his works for movies and television. Including an exhaustive filmography, this work will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars.

A study of Dickens's hostility to theatre and theatricality alongside the huge performative potential of his fiction.

Television and movies, not libraries or scholarship, have made Charles Dickens the most important unread novelist in English. In addition to the millions of people already deploying the word "Dickensian" to describe their own and others' lives, many more who have never read Dickens are familiar with the term. They know of him because they have access to over a century of adaptations of his works for movies and television. Including an exhaustive filmography, this work will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars.

John Glavin offers both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. Through close study of text and context Glavin uncovers a richly ambivalent, often unexpectedly hostile, relationship between Dickens and the theater and theatricality of his own time, and shows how Dickens' novels can be seen as a form of counter performance. Yet Glavin also explores the performative potential in Dickens' fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations.