Here, Lies: The Death of Charles Dickens in the Neo-Victorian Novel

Abstract

This thesis explores the preoccupation with the death of Charles Dickens in three recent neo-Victorian novels: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl (2009), Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (2008), and Drood by Dan Simmons (2009). Broadly using a framework of theories on authorship and death, it argues that the emerging trend to bring Dickens back to life in recent fiction only to kill him off enacts on a textual level the endlessly deferred closure engendered by Dickens's sudden death after he had completed only half of his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). Given the irretrievability of the Victorian times and the impossible encounter of today's readers with Dickens as a living, breathing presence, this study suggests that focusing on Dickens's death acts as an authorial ruse that is particularly appropriate to the contestable space of neo-Victorian representation.