Physical description

Hard Cover edition, Hard Times and Pictures for Italy.
Author: Charles Dickens.
Publisher: Chapman & Hall Ltd, London.
Date: 1866-1870’s first published in book form 1846 (See note section this document for more information on Edition).
Green cloth hardcover, Spine black has Author and Title in gold lettering. The spine has a Library label and no Volume information.

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine cover with typed text PAT 823.8 DIC
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library covered by a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service.
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service.

Summary

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was one of the great English novelists of the Victorian era, famous for vivid characters, social criticism, and stories that were first published in serial form. He began as a journalist, rose to enormous popularity during his lifetime, and wrote major works such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations. Pictures from Italy first published 1846 is a travelogue describing Dickens’s 1844 journey through Italy with his family that included Rome, Venice, Florence, and other cities. It mixes vivid descriptions of art, landscape, and carnival life with his characteristic observations on social inequality and political fragmentation in pre unification Italy. Together this combined volume offers both a major insight on Victorian industrial England and a lighter, more personal travel narrative showing Dickens from two sides, the social reformer and the acute observer tourist.