Plays of Charles Dickens

This groundbreaking book offers the first complete scholarly edition of Dickens's dramatic works. It challenges the previous neglect of these plays, recognising that his fascination with theatre, his playwrighting, and stage management of lavish amateur productions all had a formative impact on his professional identity and literary imagination. This pioneering critical edition of seven plays, single- and co-authored by Dickens, places his theatrical writing centre stage to encourage further critical work and interest in Dickens the dramatist and, perhaps, new productions of the plays.

Joanna Hofer-Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the English and Comparative Literary Studies department at the University of Warwick. Her recent publications include Dickens and Demolition (2018) and Sensation Drama, 1860—1880: An Anthology (2019, co-edited with Beth Palmer), as well as articles on various aspects of nineteenth-century drama and Dickens studies. Pete Orford is Course Director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies at the University of Buckingham, and Academic Advisor to the Charles Dickens Museum in London. His recent publications include The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens (2023) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel and our endless attempts to end it (2018).