About this ebook
Dickens and the Law revisits the legal venues and characters running through Bleak House, David Copperfield and ten other Dickens novels – which have embedded the images of lawyers such as Tulkinghorn, Jaggers and Vholes in the public's memory – and, in so doing, examines how Dickens deals with some of the most profound questions of social relationships, crime and punishment, and the nature of our country's constitution.
From exposing the iniquities of the law in The Pickwick Papers, the cruelty of the workhouse and the savage buffoonery of the magistracy in Oliver Twist to the wider consideration of our society in Barnaby Rudge and Little Dorrit, Dickens not only casts an ironic eye over the legal system but gives us a close-up examination of the problems the legal system is trying to solve.
Dickens and the Law is an engrossing read for anyone with an interest in the law – and how it inspired and tormented one of the greatest novelists in the English language.
Review
'Carefully organised and thoughtfully crafted... The analysis is peppered with excerpts of Dickens writings, and it's this combination which adds new dimension and depth to well-known characters and places...' Middle Templar Magazine
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 11
Decency v Arrogance: The Pickwick Papers, 25
Childhood, Crime and Virtue: Oliver Twist, 39
Squeers and the Power of the Law: Nicholas Nickleby, 62
A Scary Legal Dummy: The Old Curiosity Shop, 78
Prejudice, Populism and the Constitution: Barnaby Rudge, 92
A Law-Abiding Society? American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, 126
An Unlikely Partnership: David Copperfield, 154
A Troubled Dream of the Law: Bleak House, 178
Recte Numerare: Little Dorrit, 208
The Lion and the Jackal: A Tale of Two Cities, 234
Illusions and Evidence: Great Expectations, 242
A Lawyer Learns to Love: Our Mutual Friend, 261
Notes 272
About the Author 276
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About the author
Michael Lynch was born in Manchester and read English Language and Literature at Oxford University. He taught English for several years in schools and colleges and was subsequently called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, specialising as a consultant in Employment Law. He is married with two grown-up children and, for many years, lived in Staffordshire where he served as a County Councillor. Now retired, he lives in the Cambridge area and teaches courses on Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot at the University of the Third Age in Cambridge. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship and a member of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently working on a book of limericks.
Michael was drawn to write this book partly by the fact that Dickens himself had been a member of the Middle Temple for fifteen years between 1839 and 1855.
