In his works, from Oliver Twist to Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens reveals a continuum of artistic as well as social development over a period of four decades. In this highly original study, Badri Raina relates Dickens' novels thoroughly to one another, illuminating the works by seeing them in terms of the author's changing social outlook, personal attitudes, and aesthetic practice. Raina's book will fascinate readers of Dickens, and will serve social historians as well.

The unifying point of Raina's study is Dickens' ambivalence toward respectable Victorian bourgeois society; he...