This book explores the relationship between Dickens and canonical
Romantic authors: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy and Mary
Shelley, and Keats. Addressing a significant gap in Dickens studies,
four topics are identified: Childhood, Time, Progress, and Outsiders,
which together constitute the main aspects of Dickens's debt to the
Romantics. Through close readings of key Romantic texts, and eight of
Dickens's novels, Peter Cook investigates how Dickens utilizes Romantic
tropes to express his responses to the exponential growth of
post-revolutionary industrial, technological culture and its effects on
personal life and relationships. In this close study of Dickensian
Romanticism, Cook demonstrates the enduring relevance of Dickens and the
Romantics to contemporary culture.