Dear Readers,
As we begin a new chapter online, consider how less remote we are than the arctic explorer Robert Walton was when he wrote to his sister, Margaret Saville, in England.
Since our seated classes were canceled before your copies of the Victorian volume of the Norton anthology were issued, I have included in this blog post a list with links to texts that we’ll study that are available through Project Gutenberg.
Before I write more about the list, I should address the subtitle of the paper-craft graphic above (one I created recently during some much-needed time away from the screen). The phrase “like the dickens” is not a reference to the Victorian author. It’s a euphemism. More specifically, it’s a minced oath: an expression that’s created by altering the spelling or pronunciation of a word that’s considered profane. Shakespeare penned the minced oath “like the dickens,” for “like the devilkins” (little devils), in his comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, which he wrote more than two-hundred years before Charles Dickens was born.
Now to the list, and a second one that follows. The first is a chronological list of the longer Victorian works that we will study. The second includes the MLA-style works cited entries for the four texts, plus MLA style entries for both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on Project Gutenberg and your Barnes and Noble paperback edition. When you write about these texts, you will need to include MLA-style documentation. Bookmark this page for quick reference.
Remember to check your CVCC email and Blackboard regularly for updates and assignments.
We will get through these days.
Sincerely sequestered,
Dr. Lucas
Longer* Victorian-era Readings
- Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. 1843.
- Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865.
- Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1886.
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” 1892.
*Longer readings for English 242. By Victorian standards, these book-length works aren’t long; A Christmas Carol and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are novellas, and “The Speckled Band” is a short story.
Sample MLA Works Cited Entries
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865. Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm. Accessed 22 Mar. 2020.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. 1843. Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm. Accessed 22 Mar. 2020.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” 1892. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm. Accessed 22 Mar. 2020.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818, 1831. Introduction and Notes by Karen Karbeiner. Barnes and Noble, 2003.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818, 1831. Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm. Accessed 22 Mar. 2020.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1886. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42/pg42-images.html. Accessed 22 Mar. 2020.
Jane Lucas 