The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens: Pictures from Italy

The Oxford Dickens edition of Pictures from Italy puts the spotlight on Dickens’s ’little book’ describing his travels through Italy in 1844 and 1845. Throughout, Dickens offers his withering reviews of Italian masterpieces, his staunch criticism of Catholicism in Rome, tempered with a genuine love and admiration for the people of Italy and the country’s rich cultural heritage. This is the first full critical edition of the work, with detailed research outlining its composition and form, and comparisons made between all editions produced during Dickens’s lifetime. First written as personal letters, then printed as newspaper correspondence, then reshaped once more into a single book, the evolution of Pictures from Italy provides a fascinating insight into Dickens’s creative and editorial process.

Pete Orford’s introduction puts the work under the microscope to track the changes made across these several iterations and uncover the story of its genesis and development. Analysis of the few remaining manuscript pages and Orford’s own travels through Italy help to unpick several mysteries of the text.

Previous editions of the work have been for general readership with critical essays that focus on the time Dickens spent in Italy (1844-5). This edition offers a different approach, supplementing this familiar story with the lesser discussed period of 1846 when Dickens, back in London, first turns his various letters into newspaper correspondence, then a monograph, whilst battling the pressures of launching a daily newspaper and planning a new novel. Dickens’s time in Italy defines the content of the book, but it is his subsequent time in London which defines its shape and structure.

This edition reproduces in situ the original illustrations provided by Samuel Palmer for the first edition of 1846, with further illustrations provided for subsequent editions contained in the appendices.

Pete Orford, Course Director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies, University of Buckingham

Pete Orford is a leading Dickensian scholar with a keen interest in opening discussion of Dickens’s works to a popular audience. His most recent publication is The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens (2023) which offers a guide to Dickens’s life and works to new scholars and enthusiasts. He has been involved in several community online readalongs and projects to get people talking about Dickens. He is the lead organiser for the annual Dickens Day conference in London, course director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies, and an academic associate of the Charles Dickens Museum.