Juliet John. Dickens and Mass Culture. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2010. Pp. xii + 321. 50.00 [pounds sterling]; $113.95. Dickens's career involved a clash of competing pressures: a commitment to high literary ideals at the same time as he sought to reach a wide audience; a dedication to radical political reform (as the term "radical" was understood in his day) even as he cherished declining communal traditions; as keen an eye on the market value of his works as on his artistic integrity; the creation of a public persona which did not always accord with his private life. Perhaps nothing better illustrates these apparent contradictions than Hard Times (1854). Overtly proclaiming the importance of "fancy" and fellow feeling in opposition to utilitarianism and the Gradgrindian philosophy of "facts," the novel originated in a hard-headed business decision to stimulate declining sales of his periodical Household Words by introducing into its pages a popular serialized novel. Although alert to the paradox that the supposed idlers of the circus were hard-working professionals, in contrast to the braggart factory owner Bounderby, who is never seen to do a lick of work, Dickens wholly sidesteps any hint that the novel's central symbol of carefree imaginative play was in its day the foremost commercial enterprise in the emerging entertainment industry.
