This book takes a fresh look at childhood in Dickens' works and in Victorian science and culture more generally. It offers a new way of understanding Dickens' interest in childhood by showing how his fascination with new scientific ideas about childhood and practices of scientific inquiry shaped his narrative techniques and aesthetic imagination.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Experimental Subjects: Oliver Twist and the Culture of Mesmerist Experimentation 2. Hothouse Children: Dombey and Son and Popular Medical Child Health Manuals 3. Dickens, the Social Mission of Victorian Paediatrics and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children 4. The Feelings of Childhood: Dickens and the Study of the Child's Mind 5. Monstrous Births and Saltationism in Our Mutual Friend and Popular Anatomical Museums Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index