This volume of essays provides a selection of leading contemporary scholarship that situates Dickens in a global perspective. The articles address four main areas: Dickens's reception outside Britain and North America; his intertextual relations with and influence upon writers from different parts of the world; Dickens as traveller; and the presence throughout his fiction and journalism of subjects, including race and empire, that extend beyond the national contexts in which his work is usually considered. Written by leading researchers from diverse countries and cultures, this is an indispensable reference work in the field of Dickens studies.

John O. Jordan is Professor, Department of Literature, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA. He is the Director of the Dickens Project and Editor of the Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Nirshan Perera is a Graduate Student Instructor in the Department of Literature, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Reception: Russian Dickens studies, 1970-1995, Nina Diakonova; First steps toward a history of the mid-Victorian novel in colonial Australia, Tim Dolin; The introduction of Dickens into China (1906-1960): a case study in target culture reception, Eva Hung; Global Dickens, John O. Jordan; Dickens in Japan, Masaie Matsumura; French studies on Dickens since 1970, Anny Sadrin; Dickens and Barradas in Madrid, 1921: a hospitable meeting, Beatriz Vegh. Part II Intertextuality: Agnon's Dickensian moment: 'Baya'ar uva'ir', Nehama Aschkenasy; Nostalgia to amnesia: Charles Dickens, Marcus Clarke and narratives of Australia's convict origins, Beth A. Boehm; Literary origins (II): Dickens, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère; A colonial city and its time(s), Ranajit Guha; Close reading at a distance: the African Americanization of Bleak House, Daniel Hack; Postcolonial Dickens, John O. Jordan. Part III Dickens and Travel: Dickens discovers Dickens, Jerome Meckier; Charles Dickens and Italy: The 'new picturesque', Francesca Orestano; Crossing the Channel with Dickens, Dominic Rainsford. Part IV Worldly Matters: Foreign languages and original understanding in Little Dorrit, Matthias Bauer; Despatched to the periphery: the changing play of centre and periphery in Dickens's work, Brian Cheadle; Savages and settlers in Dickens: reading multiple centres, Anthony Chennells; Realism, fetishism and genocide: Negro Head tobacco in and around Great Expectations, Elaine Freedgood; Arctic highlanders and Englishmen: Dickens, cannibalism, and sensation, Jen Hill; The redemptive powers of violence? Carlyle, Marx and Dickens, Gareth Stedman Jones; Mutiny echoes: India, Britons, and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Priti Joshi; Sucking the Empire dry: colonial critique in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Miriam O'Kane Mara; The racial other, Grace Moore; 'Wholesale, retail and for exportation': empire and the family business in Dombey and Son, Suvendrini Pere