To what extent did Charles Dickens see himself as a medium of forces beyond his conscious control? What did he think such subconscious mechanisms might be, and how did his thoughts on the subject play out in his writings? Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens traces these questions through three Dickens novels: Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House. It is the first book-length study to approach Dickensian psychology from the vantage point of what the speculations of Dickens's-rather than of our own-had to say about mental phenomena, both normal and abnormal.

This book explores three crucial stages in Dickens' on-going voyage of discovery into what has been called the 'hidden springs' of his fiction; arguing that in three of Dickens best known novels, we witness Dickens responding to some identifiable force represented as coming from underneath the ground plan of the book in question.