DEVELOPMENT OF DICKENS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29871, 11 July 1962, Page 15

DEVELOPMENT OF DICKENS

Audience Of 300 At Address

“In referring to his readers as 'my English audience’ Dickens suggests his awareness cf the need to get a reaction from his readers.” said Professor Jo-an Stevens last evening at a public address arranged by the Canterbury English Association. More than 300 university students and members of the association and the Dickens Fellowship were present. Professor Stevens, associate professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington. described the development of Dickens and his I style and technique as a popular entertainer and serious artist. It was essential to Dickens to feel that he could move his readers, and at the same time he thought of himself as a social and moral apostle, she said. In the nineteenth century. Dickens was considered aS both popular and good. He made a deliberate attempt to cap.uire the popular market. and as an enter ainer he bad his finger on the sales of his novels and was able to gauge the reaction of hishis audience, Professor Stevens said. The sales cf his novels and numbers afforded evidence of his commercial success, and the work of contemporary winters gave ample evidence of his power to move people to tears. His novels were intended to be read by everyone in the home, young and old, so his intention was to move their hearts, not their stomachs, she said. With the exception of the Christmas books Dickens never published a novel as a book. The latest Dickens was always a number, or an instalment of a series moving on with leisurely pace from month to month. Near the end of a series he would advertise that a complete reprint would later be available. The main market in the nineteenth century was the library borrower, and as a convention of the times th< complete novel was always published in three volumes for the library, Professor Stevens said.