On Poverty

Dickens is famous for his moralising and the entreaties within his fiction to help the poor, and characters such as the Cratchit family, or little Joe in Bleak House have become iconic figures in our recollections of the nineteenth century’s working class struggles. This collection includes articles such as ‘A Poor man and his beer’ and ‘Walk in the Workhouse’ based directly upon Dickens’ own involvement and experience of walking round the more derelict areas of London and England to meet the poor firsthand and report their plights to the reading population, as well as considering Dickens’ own charitable work, such as his involvement in setting up a refuge for prostitutes, as defended in his article ‘A Home for Homeless Women’. In contrast to his personal nostalgia for the innocence of childhood, Dickens tirelessly argued against those who hearkened back to the good old days, instead flying the flag for evolution and development. Following on from the success of On London, On Travel and On Theatre, this new volume is sure to have wide appeal.