Discovering Dickens community reading project returns with Hard Times

A new chapter in the popular Discovering Dickens community reading project begins later this month, when the first installment of Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times will be mailed to readers. The novel, first published in 1854 as a serial in a weekly journal in London, will be distributed in 10 facsimile newsprint issues, designed to allow a modern audience to experience the work as Dickens' readers did a century and a half ago.

Readers can sign up at http://dickens.stanford.edu through Jan. 18 to receive the free installments, to be mailed weekly from late January until early April. Alternatively, participants can ask to be sent e-mail reminders alerting them when weekly installments are available for download each Friday from the project website, beginning Jan. 28. (Hard copies can be mailed only to U.S. addresses.)

Hard Times, Dickens' shortest novel, is set in a fictional factory town in northern England in the mid-19th century and offers a biting critique of the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution on Victorian society. Although "atypically streamlined," the novel "connects apparently disparate concerns—industrialism, education, utilitarianism, even the trials of marriage—and does so with a typical Dickensian wealth of humor, character and serious social observation," said Linda Paulson, project director and associate dean and director of the Master of Liberal Arts Program.

The project's previous serializations—Great Expectations in 2002 and A Tale of Two Cities in 2003—earned a widespread, loyal readership. More than 7,000 readers from around the country and the world participated the first year.

Why would thousands of readers wait for an installment printed on cheap newsprint to arrive in the mail when the full novel is readily available at bookstores and on the Internet? It's "good fun," responds Paulson, a Victorian scholar who conceived of the Stanford reading project and then watched its popularity grow far beyond her expectations.

Dickens' power to create anticipation produced in his Victorian readers the kind of "cliffhanger obsession" found in the 21st-century fans of the television reality show Survivor or of the Harry Potter series, Paulson said. And reading the narrative a few weekly "teaspoons" at a time, as Dickens once described the serial form, gives readers an opportunity to really chew over the narrative, she noted. "Dickens' readers know they are in the hands of a master storyteller."

The facsimile edition pages were created using issues of the London journal Household Words from the Stanford University Libraries. The serial installments originally were only lightly illustrated; the facsimile edition will include reproductions of illustrations from American and English volume issues of the novel, also from the Stanford library collections. Supplemental historical illustrations and notes will be published on the project website.

On Jan. 31 at 7:30 p.m., Marco Barricelli of the American Conservatory Theater will read an installment of Hard Times in Kresge Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public.

Discovering Dickens is sponsored by the Stanford President's Fund, Stanford Continuing Studies, the Stanford Alumni Association, the Stanford University Libraries, Community Day at Stanford and the Office of Public Affairs.

For more information, visit the web at http://dickens.stanford.edu or call 724-9588.

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