'The Wheel Of Time Is Rolling For An End'

Abstract

'The wheel of time is rolling for an end' - these are words with which Dickens ended his account of a journey through Italy in 1844/5, which was published in the Daily News under the title Travelling Letters, Written on the Road . In the years 1832-33, when Dickens was a reporter for the True Sun and the Morning Chronicle , he travelled a great deal. In Dickens's youth, travel was what it had been for centuries: a difficult undertaking seldom indulged in for pleasure. The Pickwick Papers contains a number of separate stories, connected by the coach journeys. This chapter shows how Dickens used the journey as a literary introduction in A Tale of Two Cities , and as a welding device for the adventures in The Pickwick Papers . As a last example of a journey by coach the chapter examines that to Little Nell's hiding place in the Old Curiosity Shop . Keywords: A Tale of Two Cities ; Charles Dickens; coach journey; Little Nell; Old Curiosity Shop ; The Pickwick Papers ; Travelling Letters Written on the Road