For fans new and old, an enjoyable tour through the world of Dickens in the hands of a master critic

John Sutherland is the recently retired Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus at University College London: a title that one feels Dickens might have had some fun with. He has taught and published widely, particularly on Victorian fiction. His most recent relevant books are The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longman, 2009) and Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (Profile, 2011). He and Stephen Fender published Love, Sex, Death and Words: Surprising Tales from a Year in Literature with Icon Books in 2010.