Routledge Library Editions: The Nineteenth-Century Novel

2 primary works

The Literature of Change

by John Lucas

Published 1 January 1980

This book deals with Mrs. Gaskell, William Hale White and Thomas Hardy, provincial novelists, who each wrote about the nature of social change.

Melancholy Man

by John Lucas

Published 8 October 1970

First published in 1980, this book surveys Dickens' growing power to drive deep into the causes of his contemporary conditions. It reveals the importance of nature to Dickens as a rich metaphor of human freedom and potentiality, and emphasises his concern with time and the problems of freedom. The author considers the peculiarity of Dickens being unanimously acclaimed as a great writer considering the difficulty in placing him definitively within the literary tradition. The author argues Dickens was an isolated figure, indifferent to changing fashions and with a strong sense of the dignity of human nature and that this formed the basis of his character and writings.