This thesis analyses and reappraises the prompt copies that Dickens made for his public readings. In many ways, my thesis expands upon the work of Philip Collins and Malcolm Andrews who have offered the most substantial scholarly engagements with Dickens’s readings. The work of these scholars has largely focused on the performances themselves and the final received version of each reading, rather than the revising and drafting process through which these readings came into being. My thesis offers an alternative approach to Dickens’s readings, arguing that our understanding of them is enhanced by sustained engagement with the complex and lively textual processes which produced the performances. In doing so, this thesis has three major contentions. Firstly, I contend that examining the reading texts and Dickens’s process of adapting them for performance enables us to encounter Dickens as a different kind of writer than we find elsewhere in his oeuvre. Secondly, I argue that Dickens’s readings offer a prime example of Dickensian adaptation showing the author in the process of negotiating reading, performance, and adaptation. Finally, this thesis argues that engaging with the reading prompt copies as texts that lie at the intersection of adaptation, composition, and revision studies reveals an under-examination within these wider fields of the concept of self-adaptation. I offer close readings of Dickens’s self-adaptation within the prompt copies for the readings. I situate these recorded practices in the broader context of other annotated performance texts from the period, such as theatrical promptbooks. I also chart the publication of Dickens’s reading texts during the course of his tours, discussing how print and text affected how audiences witnessed his performances. I study examples of audience annotators who recorded their experiences of witnessing the readings and often unknowingly reflected Dickens’s own annotation practices. My thesis offers a critical reassessment of Dickens’s readings, viewing them as an extension of rather than a distraction from his literary craftsmanship.
Dickens, Dickens's Readings, public readings, Dickensian adaptation, adaptation studies, self-adaptation, performance, manuscript studies, textual studies, nineteenth-century theatre
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations