After Dickens: Reading, Adaptation and Performance

Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

by John Glavin

After Dickens is both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. John Glavin conducts a historical inquiry into Dickens's relationship to the theatre and theatricality of his own time, and uncovers a much more ambivalent, often hostile, relationship than has hitherto been noticed. In this context, Dickens's novels can be seen as a form of counter-performance, one which would allow the author to perform without being seen or scrutinized. But Glavin also identifies a rich performative potential in Dickens's fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations. The book as a whole, therefore, offers a radical new reading of Dickens through an unusual alliance between literary criticism and theatrical performance.

226 pages, ebook

First published February 10, 1995

About the author

John Glavin is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves its history and its stories.

As a department chair for 25 years at Glenbrook North High School, he published textbooks on writing including one selling a total of 500,000 copies. After retiring he researched and collected over 100 books on the Columbian Exposition. He developed Trapped on the Wheel from 1994 to 2008 as a labor of love.

Currently, he is writing the sequel to Trapped on the Wheel about Alessandra and the Pullman Railroad Strike of 1894, entitled Striker!"