Dickens's Public Readings and the Victorian Author

Abstract

Charles Dickens's public performances in which he took up his own novels before audiences composed primarily of readers and brought the characters to life through his impersonation of them, invented a new genre of performance, one we now take for granted. But what were these performances actually like? And what do they mean to our understanding of Dickens, the man, the actor, and the writer? Available to us only through eyewitness accounts, prompt copies with their scribbled notes and Dickens's own remarks about them, the readings are difficult to analyze. Clearly the work of a performer, a man with theatrical experience and talents, the readings were, however, much more than monologues based on the novels. They were readings, presentations done from a book, and they were by the author, an innovation both in theatrical performance and in the role of novelist. In order for us to gain a sense of how these events participated in the shaping of Dickens's public persona and of the idea of the author more generally in the Victorian period, we need to consider what we know of these performances in detail. 1 What is the significance of Dickens's deliberately simple staging of the performances, without costumes or props? What should we make of the fact that Dickens always spoke with a book before him, but sometimes closed the book before beginning to read? And what does it mean for a novelist to perform scenes of reading from his or her own novels for an audience? According to Michel Foucault, readers, scholars, and others seek out authors in order to