Milli mála - 05.07.2016, Side 58

PHILIP V. ALLINGHAM

Milli mála 7/2015

62

Lykilorð: synir Charles Dickens, Sepoy-uppreisnin, Krím-
stríðið, jólabækur, jólasögur

ABSTRACT
Seasonal Tales, Far-flung Settings: The Unfa-
miliar Landscapes of The Christmas Books and
Stories (1843–1867)
Modern readers of literature in English tend to identify a
single great novelist with London as a world city: Charles
Dickens. However, from the 1840s onward, as he entered
his middle period, Dickens became more interested in for-
eign shores and settings far removed from London: first, as
he travelled abroad, to America and Italy, and then as his
sons matured into young men who would assist Great Brit-
ain in the business of Empire. Beginning with The Christ-
mas Books (1843–48), and continuing with their successors
collectively known as The Christmas Stories, Dickens often
incorporated and occasionally exploited backdrops that
were neither specifically urban nor, indeed, English, to lend
these seasonal offerings the allure of the unfamiliar and
even, as in his principal collaborations with Wilkie Collins,
The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (Household Words,
1857) and No Thoroughfare (All the Year Round, 1867), the
exotic. Perhaps the presence of such foreign settings from
1857 onwards reflects the anxieties of Charles Dickens
about his own five “Sons of Empire” – Walter, Francis, Al-
fred, Sydney, and Edward (of whom two died in India, ser-
ving in the military, while still in their twenties). Moreover,
external political, social, and military events at mid-century
that shook the confidence of the English in their ability to
manage a far-flung empire and to compete successfully with
the other great European powers – the Crimean War and
the Sepoy Mutiny, in particular – are reflected in his “some-
things for Christmas” directed at his broadest reading pub-
lic, the consumers of Household Words and All the Year