The Dickens Index

by Nicolas Bentley, Michael Slater, Nina Burgis

A guide to all of Dickens's novels, short stories, pamphlets, plays, collections of journalism and travel books. Its formula of alphabetically arranged entries, keyed to the individual works, plus chapter rather than page references, makes it a useful companion to any Dickens edition. It can be used to check literary allusions, unfamiliar quotations, words and phrases, and topical or historical references, and is equally useful as an independent reference tool for identifying characters, places both real and fictitious, quotations from songs, and references to historical characters or institutions, without knowing where in Dickens's work these may occur.

Genres: Reference

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1988

About the author

Nicolas Clerihew Bentley was an English author and illustrator famous for his humorous cartoon drawings in books and magazines in the 1930s and 1940s.

Bentley was educated at University College School where he left at the age of 17. He then enrolled at Heatherley's School of Fine Art, a prestigious private college, but left after a few months.

Bentley subsequently worked for Shell for three years, but disliked working in advertising. However, in 1930, he got a break when Hilaire Belloc (who was a friend of his father) invited him to illustrate his book 'New Cautionary Tales'. The good critical reception of this book and its illustrations allowed Bentley to go freelance.

During the 1930s Bentley illustrated many books, ranging from J.B. Morton to Damon Runyon. His most famous drawings were to illustrate T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, but he illustrated more than 70 books in the course of his career, and traditionally used the byline "Nicolas Bentley drew the pictures".

In October 1934, Bentley married Barbara Hastings, daughter of the Barrister Sir Patrick Hastings.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best companions to Dickens available, in my opinion. It covers entries of (possibly) all characters in his works (if Mealy Potatoes gets an entry, then they all do), descriptions of his novels, entries on contemporary friends and figures. I first became acquainted with this work decades ago and have dipped in and out of it over the years. So I’m finally marking it as “read”, even though I will be sifting through it for years to come.