This volume in the Critical Insights series brings together a variety of new, classic, and contemporary essays on Dickens's most widely read works. Eugene Goodheart, Edytha Macy Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Brandeis University, introduces the collection with a celebration of Dickens's dramatic and imaginative powers and of his characters' "capacity to achieve selflessness in love" despite their grim surroundings. Elizabeth Gumport, writing for The Paris Review, reflects on Dickens's realism and his childlike awe at the world and people around him.