Table of Contents

List of Illustrations General Preface by the Editors Acknowledgements Abbreviations for Dickens's Works and Related Material Bibliographical Symbols and AbbreviationsIntroduction A Note on the Text How to Use the Notes The Notes Appendix A - Map of the Borough of Southwark, based on 1827 map Appendix B - The Crimean War Appendix C - Time in Little Dorrit Appendix D - Foreign Language and Foreign Speakers in Little Dorrit Appendix E - The Original Title: 'Nobody's Fault' Select Bibliography Index

About the Author

Trey Philpotts is Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and author of The Companion to Little Dorrit (2003).

Reviews

Apart from their literary appeal, Dickens's novels have always exerted a powerful his-torical interest, with works such as Bleak House often being regarded, by scholars and enthusi--asts alike, as windows on the nineteenth cen--tury. Dickens actively indulges this kind of interest, because he himself was always fasci--nated by contemporary issues, by the look of London, its changing surface, and by the myr--iad fleeting forms of material reality. Hence it seems entirely natural for Trey Philpotts to have spent 500 pages supplying historical anno--tations to Little Dorrit in this, the ninth volume of the Dickens companion series; such scholarly indulgence could well have appeared a little obsessive in relation to other writers, but in Dickens's case, it seems entirely appropriate. Extensive explanatory notes are especially rewarding with respect to Little Dorrit because of all Dickens's novels it is the one most deeply saturated in the social and political issues of the time. There is the historical background relating to debtors' prisons, which Philpotts explores in great detail, incorporating numerous extracts from government reports and prisoners' testimo--nies, as well as an 1819 ground plan of the Mar--shalsea. He also supplies a significant body of material relating to the Crimean War, financial speculation and government incompetence in the 1850s, material that sheds important new light on some of the novel's more polemical ele--ments. Separating the strands that made up Dickens's satirical representation of the Circum--locution Office, Philpotts discriminates between the Chelsea Board and the Sebastopol Committee, between civil service reform and administrative reform, and between various committees and boards of inquiry that were dis--tinct, though contemporaneous. He also shows how, after the end of the Crimean debacle, Dick--ens's emphasis changed, with his satire on the Barnacle clan shifting from war-related issues to free trade, harvests, bleaching-factory legis--lation and ministerial spin-doctoring. But most of this book has very little to do with the novel's main themes, being given over to divers little factual notes and anecdotes inspired by stray lines in Dickens's text. Many of these notes are very full, supplying a wealth of information on green tea, black tea, mon--ocles, gout, barrel-organs, Billingsgate, Hack--ney coaches and slang. Such heavy annotation would have been impossible - and rather un--endurable - in a reading edition, but here the length of the footnotes is a pure pleasure, with Philpott's spade regularly unearthing rich, peaty matter. Some of the more quixotic elements of this labour of love are helpfully offset by a very good index, which makes it relatively easy to revisit even the most apparently arcane of refer--ences, and by extensive cross-referencing to other works by Dickens and his contemporaries. With this in mind, it seems perfectly possible to imagine this book being extremely useful to all manner of Victorianists, quite independently of its connection with Little Dorrit. ... it seems perfectly possible to imagine this book being extremely useful to all manner of Victorianists, quite independently of its connection with Little Dorrit. Intended to provide factual rather than critical annotation, the volumes in the Companion series offer information regarding explicit or indirect references to actual persons, places, customs, and events, as well as commentary on literary sources and allusions. Of course, as the nineteenth century becomes more distant from us, the need for such elucidation grows. No amount of explanation, however, can allow readers today to regain fully the perspectives of Dickens's contemporaries, for as E. H. Gombrich, in Art and Illusion, observes of painting, "We cannot but look at the art of the past through the wrong end of the telescope": our reactions are inevitably influenced by the unforgettable experiences, thoughts, achievements, and atrocities that have impinged on human consciousness between the Victorian era and now. Nevertheless, we certainly benefit by trying to imagine our forebears' responses. In the case of Little Dorrit, the task seems especially formidable, since this book is among the most topical of Dickens's novels. Reading Trey Philpotts's annotations, we recognize how deeply rooted in reality Dickens's fiction is, his remarkable inventive and imaginative powers notwithstanding. Depictions in Little Dorrit that may initially strike us as exaggerations are supported by accounts taken from contemporary sources purporting to give reliable descriptions of actual phenomena. In an 1857 preface to Little Dorrit, Dickens sarcastically refers to "so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office" and "that extravagant conception, Mr Merdle." He offers in ironic defense the "unimportant fact" that the depiction of the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office was presented "in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Enquiry at Chelsea" and that the creation of Merdle "originated" after the railways speculation in the 1840s and the banking scandals of the following decade. Indeed, the main purpose of this preface is evidently to refute claims that characters and events in the novel are unrealistic. Appropriately, Trey Philpotts, in his introduction and the notes that follow, gives careful attention to the subjects of governmental bureaucracy and financial fraud, two grave national problems with many ramifications. We are made fully aware of the absurd and dispiriting delays, paperwork, and frustration imposed on seekers of patents. Anyone wishing to obtain a patent had to follow a complicated procedure requiring at least ten separate steps, each calling for a signature or countersignature or warrant or some other form of approval from a different office or functionary. But, as Philpotts effectively observes, perhaps the "most disheartening" feature was "that the movement of documents from one office to the next was entirely the responsibility of the applicant or his agent" (160). Since the Treasury Office, on which the Circumlocution Office is modeled (131-32, 399), supervised the Commissariat (148-49, 355), the branch of government responsible for mismanaging logistical support during the Crimean War, Philpotts gives us a clear understanding of the ineptitude and bungling - the rigidity, insensitivity, and irresponsibility - that led to suffering and death for thousands and thousands of British troops in the Crimea. We receive an account, for instance, of the persistent and concerned but sadly futile efforts of a British medical officer to persuade a Commissariat functionary to expedite shipment of several stoves to a medical ship "to warm the sick British soldiers," who "might otherwise die": no amount of passionate pleading had any effect on the stubborn official, who insisted on "refusing any stoves unless the right forms were filled in" (154-55). Coupled with the government's ineptitude in the Crimea was its failure to prevent financial predators in England from doing severe damage. In Merdle's misbehavior, as this Companion indicates, Dickens blends the railway speculation promoted by George Hudson and the bank failures caused by John Sadleir and others (18-20, 249-52): deceit and illegal practices seriously harmed vast numbers of ordinary people. As Philpotts observes, The Times reported that Sadleir's victims included "small. farmers, traders, clerks, assistants, police officers, &c., who have lost their little accumulations from the thrift of many years" (250). The 1857 preface also contains two paragraphs on the fate of the Marshalsea Prison, the location for many of the events in Little Dorrit. When Dickens states that anyone going to the site where the prison once was "will stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years," we realize that among these phantoms would be the figure of Dickens's own father. The notes in this Companion illuminate the living conditions in the Marshalsea: the overcrowding and confinement, the decay and squalor, the debauchery and despair. In Little Dorrit the depiction of the prison's sordid, degrading atmosphere understates matters like the licentious behavior of some inmates and the wholly inadequate sanitation (106-07). Because Dickens's intense involvement in the life of his time is reflected in his fiction, the annotation that Philpotts provides reveals wide-ranging, industrious research, as well as resourcefulness. A scholar doing such work must discover suitable sources (from Dickens's own era and from more recent times) and must then be energetic enough to find and visit libraries where these materials are accessible. Moreover, The Companion to Little Dorrit also displays sound judgment in deciding which details call for annotation, the same kind of good sense needed by a teacher to determine what in a text is self-evident and what should be explained. Little Dorrit moves through vast areas of nineteenth-century life, and Philpotts's Companion succeeds brilliantly in providing assistance through lucid, well-written comments. Depending on our familiarity with Dickens studies, we are reminded or informed about possible sources for characters like Rigaud (28-31), Tattycoram (57-59), Flora Finching (182-85), Mr. Merdle (249-52), and Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle (328-30). In addition, Philpotts skillfully introduces quotations from nineteenth-century guidebooks that corroborate (and at times may have influenced) Dickens's depictions of actual sites in France, Switzerland, and Italy. The commentary on foreign locations helps to reveal Dickens's devotion to travel: this Companion quotes from an 1853 letter to Forster in which Dickens mentions his "conviction that one of the great uses of travelling is to encourage a man to think for himself" (371). Not only place, but also time is given attention, for subtle clues in the text of Little Dorrit are used to reveal the "internal chronology" (193) of events in the narrative, and one of the five appendices provided by Philpotts carefully describes the time scheme of the book. Written from 1855 to 1857, Little Dorrit narrates a story occurring from 1826 to 1828, with references to events dating back to 1771. As we might expect, The Companion to Little Dorrit provides an invaluable collection of diverse materials concerning social history. We find accounts of subjects like the following: the introduction into England of cigarette-smoking, a habit indulged in by Dickens himself (36); the lighting of gas-lamps on London streets (68); British stereotypes regarding China (188-90, 393); distinctions among physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries in training, duties, and status (194-95, 262); the employment of British engineers by Russia and other foreign powers (210, 443-44); card-playing as a pastime (219); and styles in epitaphs (468-69). Although Philpotts makes excellent use of an enormous number of sources, Dickens himself is often helpful, for we find interesting details taken from his working notes (or "work plans") for Little Dorrit (plans for which transcripts are reproduced in this volume), his other fiction, his Book of Memoranda, his travel books American Notes and Pictures from Italy, his letters, and his periodical essays. This Companion also includes stimulating references to essays in Household Words and All the Year Round contributed by writers other than Dickens. While Philpotts builds upon and scrupulously acknowledges the research of preceding Dickens scholars, he employs material from three fine previously published articles of his own, and in many notes he presents cogent proposals that are original - or at least new to me. One example is the discovery that two Household Words essays by George Augustus Sala are probable sources for much of the depiction of Bleeding Heart Yard (170). As most Dickensians know, the volumes in the Companion series employ a format designed to facilitate use with any edition of the novel involved. The arrangement presents sections corresponding to Dickens's book and chapter divisions: a paragraph in the novel is identified by its initial clause or phrase, printed in italics, while below, in boldface, appears the expression to be annotated, followed by commentary. The notes in this Companion are supplemented by five appendices: (A) a map of the Borough of Southwark in 1827 (with markings of many sites in the novel's London scenes); (B) "The Crimean War," a useful summary; (C) the discussion that I have already mentioned, "Time in Little Dorrit"; (D) "Foreign Languages and Foreign Speakers in Little Dorrit," a listing (with accompanying commentary) of the Anglicized French and Anglicized Italian expressions found in the narrative; and (E) a stimulating discussion of "The Original Title: 'Nobody's Fault.'" Thirty-three handsomely reproduced illustrations (which include portraits, cartoons, landscapes, and urban scenes) also contribute to the volume's appeal. Because of the far-reaching scope of this book, the careful cross-referencing and the full index are extremely helpful. These tools allow us readily to trace patterns of emphasis and development, since topics recur in different contexts. For an enterprise of such magnitude, The Companion to Little Dorrit includes only a relatively small number of typographical slips, and these are of the harmless kind - for instance, the use of the word "Typographical" itself in place of "Topographical" in the bibliographical entry for John Gorton (527). In the explanations, I notice only one minor inaccuracy: the assertion that in the last scene of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale "Hermione reveals that she only pretended to be dead to save her life" (278). In this final scene, Hermione gives no explanation for her extended pretense (carried out with the help of Paulina), but the most likely motive is a desire to avoid reunion with Leontes until the daughter that he had ordered cast away in her infancy is recovered. For Paulina knows that immediately after hearing of the death of his son, Leontes recanted his accusation against his wife and that she therefore faced no danger of execution (3.2). The Companion to Little Dorrit is a splendid accomplishment that enriches our comprehension of this novel and of the ways in which Dickens's imagination worked on the realities of his time. After reading the explanation of early nineteenth-century bankruptcy and insolvency laws, we recognize a little more fully the extent of the injustice done to William Dorrit. Although he, as a partner in a firm, happened to have only a very tenuous connection to any financial misdeed, he was nevertheless held fully accountable (99). In contrast, the Circumlocution Office, the creditor responsible for Dorrit's imprisonment, evades responsibility for its many outrages. This Companion also notices the fascinating possibility (mentioned in the notes in volume 8 of the Pilgrim Letters) that Dickens in writing chapters 28-31 of book 2 was influenced by numerous details in the conclusion devised by Frederick Fox Cooper for a dramatization of Little Dorrit performed in November 1856, well before the novel was completed (469). Trey Philpotts verifies the memorable epithet in Walter Bagehot's remark in 1858 about Dickens, "He describes London like a special correspondent for posterity"; but The Companion to Little Dorrit also confirms the aptness of the complementary view expressed by many commentators, the belief that Dickens was a great poet who transformed his readers' views of the world. This ambitious, admirable, and attractive book significantly assists us in seeing how the two approaches that Dickens blends - realism and illusion - interact in Little Dorrit. This ambitious, admirable, and attractive book significantly assists us in seeing how the two approaches that Dickens blends -realism and illusion - interact in Little Dorrit. Philpotts provides annotations to Little Dorrit on a scale hitherto unattempted. Especially helpful is the introduction, which explains that events that underlie the novel, particularly the national debate over the Crimean War. The 470 pages of annotations to specific passages identify allusions and clarify any matter that a modern reader might find obscure. For each of the original 20 serial parts, Philpotts includes a transcript of Dickens's outline plan. There are 33 illustrations, mainly of places used as settings in the novel and of people thought to have inspired the characters in the novel. The five appendixes include an analysis of the novel's time line, an explanation of the novelist's original title, and a discussion of the devices used to signify foreign speech and speakers. This volume is packed with information concerning anything one might want to know about the novel; it is an indispensable tool for every serious student of Dickens. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty. Dickens scholars, critics, and students can only be thankful for the richness of primary and reference sources available to them, many of them published in recent decades-the Clarendon editions of the novels, supplemented by other fine scholarly editions like Edgar Rosenberg's Norton Critical Edition of Great Expectations; the now completed Pilgrim Edition of Dickens's letters; the Garland Dickens Bibliographies and ongoing AMS Dickens Bibliographies (for two contributions to these in 2003, see the paragraphs on Dickens Studies Annual, below). The most notable addition to this collection of scholarly resources in 2003 was The Companion to Little Dorrit, edited by Trey Philpotts. The Companion to Little Dorrit maintains the high standard set by earlier volumes in the Dickens Companion Series, most recently Nancy Metz's Companion to Martin Chuzzlewit (2001). All of us who take an easy elevator ride to the top floor, so to speak, from which the view is extensive, owe a large debt to scholars like Metz and Philpotts who have done the work of planning, excavating, and constructing such a solid scholarly edifice. While (alas!) most current Dickens criticism will be covered with cobwebs as soon as the next generation of critical fashion displaces today's, library copies of volumes like The Companion to Little Dorrit will be making repeated trips to the bindery to repair the wear and tear of continued use. The Companion to Little Dorrit is of course primarily a reference volume, and as such it is comprehensive, even encyclopedic, in coverage and detail. The index contains more than 2,000 entries, most of them with multiple citations. There might be a piece of background information in the novel, some reference or allusion, that The Companion fails to gloss, but it would be no easy task to find the omission. And this conscientious inclusiveness is particularly valuable for Little Dorrit, "Dickens's most factual novel," Philpotts suggests, perhaps his "most allusive" (xiii, 10). More than simply a catalog of glosses, however, The Companion to Little Dorrit is a reference with an argument. Philpotts's introduction insists that the novel above all reflects Dickens's participation in the distress and debate engendered by the rocky progress of the Crimean War in 1855, heavily publicized as Dickens was planning and writing the early numbers. The war "supplies the language, the issues and frequently the imagery and conceits that pervade Little Dorrit" (1). The novel was responding, in short, to the news of the day as defined by The Times-most of it bad news, accounting for the relatively gray and dour tone of Little Dorrit. The novel's allusiveness cuts two ways, firmly grounding it in its historical context, but also suggesting as a corollary that the mid-1850s found Dickens's personal life sterile, an imaginative void which public affairs filled for want of more intense feelings. The last monthly number of Little Dorrit was published just a few months before the Ellen Ternan era began, radically altering the direction of Dickens's interests for the last dozen years of his life. The Companion's focus on the politics of the Crimean War does not come at the expense of other contemporary topics, however. It contains excellent discussions of many other of the novel's sources: of the welter of financial peculation and the suicide of speculator John Sadleir, inspiration for Mr. Merdle; of the Marshalsea; of Continental travel. Hundreds of scriptural and literary allusions are glossed; there is a full glossary, as well, of the many foreign phrases transliterated into English by (especially) Rigaud and Cavalletto. To summarize in a few sentences the topics discussed and allusions explicated would be to attempt to summarize in that space the culture of mid-Victorian England, in which Philpotts seems virtually to have taken up residence. The Victorians may in many respects still seem "modern" to us; we do not feel as culturally distant from Dickens, probably, as from Chaucer or Shakespeare. Yet already we are nearly as far removed from Dickens's era as he was from Milton's, and the day is' life recedes further into Time's endless night, works like The Companion to Little Dorrit become increasingly valuable as aids in illuminating the material and imaginative world of the past. The Companion will inevitably find itself mostly in the hands of academics and advanced students of Dickens-which in some respects seems a shame, for as well as a scholarly resource it is an excellent browsing volume and eclectic survey of mid-Victorian England (or at least, London). A random turning of the pages might bring one to a paragraph on the origins of the cigarette (including Dickens's own cigarette-smoking); or to a short essay on the pollution of the Thames (with 141 sewers discharging 250 tons of sewage into the river daily); to a note on the postmortem appearance of hanging victims; to a testimonial to the digestive merits of oysters; or to discussions of the duties and powdering of a footman, the second-hand clothes trade in London, the most favored methods of Victorian suicide-among hundreds of others. The Companion has a readable, accessible, and attractive format, and the text is supplemented with 33 illustrations, several appendices, an endpaper map of Little Dorrit's London, ample bibliography, and thorough index. It is, in sum, one of the most interesting and unquestionably the most valuable of scholarly contributions to Dickens studies in 2003. The Companion has a readable, accessible, and attractive format, and the text is supplemented with 33 illustrations, several appendices, an endpaper map of Little Dorrit's London, ample bibliography, and thorough index. It is, in sum, one of the most interesting and unquestionably the most valuable of scholarly contributions to Dickens studies in 2003. Little Dorrit is probably Dickens's most densely allusive 20-part novel. Explanatory annotation therefore presents a formidable challenge, in terms both of the research required and the tactical decisions to be made about how much actually needs annotating. In relation to the latter problem the Companion Series has risked erring on the side of excessive annotation. This is probably wise in the long run: as Dickens's world recedes from our own, more will need explaining to his readers in the next generation than may be thought necessary at present; and for readers, in England and abroad, who are less familiar anyway with English culture and history, over-supply is the better judgement. Trey Philpotts has been working on this project for many years. The present reviewer recalls welcoming his 1991 article, in The Dickensian, on 'The Real Marshalsea', when he revealed the prison layout and the details of Marshalsea life that Dickens chose not to include in either his autobiographical fragment or Little Dorrit. In fact, Dickens's recreation of the Marshalsea in the novel - i.e. what he chooses to detail - is shown in the Companion to be uncannily accurate. Philpotts remarks that the only case in the whole novel of a 'possible discrepancy between the real and fictional worlds' (116) of the Marshalsea is when Arthur first visits the prison and follows Frederick Dorrit as he 'turned in at the third or fourth doorway' on the right-hand side of the main residential block. The fourth doorway would actually have led to the accommodation reserved for female debtors only. It is a small point, but Philpotts's observation on Dickens's extraordinary accuracy is impressive testimony to the extent to which the prison experiences of Dickens's childhood remained luridly precise in every detail to the novelist over thirty years later. This meticulous checking of Dickens's accuracy raises a larger issue. Because Little Dorrit draws so much on the known, material, historical world of the 1850s and 1820s, the Companion annotator - unlike, say, his Penguin or Norton editorial counterpart - finds himself in the position again and again of not only explaining topical and topographical references but enlarging on the details of the actual historical material to the point where Dickens's fictional working of such material can even seem to be put under some positivist pressures. Where, how and why does Dickens deviate from the historical records? Should we be chiding him for his anachronisms, remembering that Little Dorrit was supposedly set in the 1820s? Dickens might have set Dorrit's prison accommodation in the wrong part of the block. So what? In what ways is that important? What reader was ever to know that except someone who has spent a long time researching early nineteenth-century Marshalsea history? Well, the Companion now makes sure hundreds of readers of Little Dorrit will know that odd slip, just as they will also now know the full extent of Dickens's debts to and deviations from all those recorded historical facts that prompted so much in his novel. This may sound ungrateful to the exacting quasi-archaeological work undertaken by the recent Companion compilers, but it is not so intended. The Companions are now a substantial presence in the Dickens studies industry, not just a modest service sector. This must prompt questions about their status and function in so far as these impinge on our reading of the fiction. Their painstaking patchwork reconstitution of the historical matrix inflects the experience of their novels in elusive ways. According to the Series Editors, 'the nature of the annotation is factual rather than critical' (xi); but at certain points the distinction is smudged. For example, Philpotts annotates a moment when Tattycoram and Miss Wade are seen together: 'Close companionship between women was common throughout the nineteenth century ... [they] would engage in kisses, sleep in the same bed ... without anything being thought amiss... That such behaviour might be considered lesbian, as modern readers are inclined to think ... seems unlikely' (301). That account may be 'factual' but here it also becomes a critical intervention. This particular volume is one of the largest in the series. Its subject is, of course, colossal. There is, for example, the range simply of biblical allusions, whether specific and intentionally allusive or just chance echoes and cadences that have found their way into Dickens's prose. Drawing attention to their frequency here prompts one to think this must be Dickens's most religious novel, not least in its passionate anti---religiosity. The biblical phrases and cadences, deliberate and accidental, remind us too of the rich cultural compost of Dickens's language, and for that we should be grateful to the Companion. On the political elements in the novel, Philpotts is convincing in associating the Circumlocution Office with the Treasury, rather than the usual suggestion that it is modelled on the Civil Service. He adduces plenty of evidence to back this identification, on several occasions. Elsewhere some of the more arcane annotation is eye-catching: for instance there is a whole paragraph on contemporary wage-levels and employment conditions of metropolitan plasterers to accompany Mrs Plornish's complaint about jobs seeming to have 'gone underground' (173). We stray to the borders of daftly supererogatory annotation when Mr F's Aunt's announcement that 'There's mile-stones on the Dover road?' is accompanied by a solemn explanation that, 'under an Act of 1774, all main and important secondary roads were measured and milestones erected ...' (271). By and large, however, the provision of information is both generous and well-judged. On this long journey through the novel, Philpotts is not too garrulous a 'companion', though massively well-informed. In fact, despite the queries and reservations recorded above, this is a really splendid volume. It makes absorbing reading from cover to cover, and illuminates its subject in dozens of different ways. I had always assumed, idly, that when Mrs General, in Venice, cites Mr Eustace's guidebook as comparing 'the Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges', she was giving her own fatuously chauvinistic reading. But here indeed, in the Companion, we have Mr Eustace's own words: 'The celebrated Rialto ... sinks almost into insignificance when compared with..the superb ... structures of Blackfriars and Westminster' (370). The volume aims for comprehensiveness within manageable limits. There will continue to be discoveries that will increase or further nuance our sense of the context of Little Dorrit. This journal has a few more to offer: for instance, Gilian West's suggestion of an original for Mrs Clennam's house (Winter 2000) and Dr Cosnett's diagnosis of the nature of Mrs Clennam's paralysis and Flintwinch's 'focal dystonia' (Spring 2003). Might one also suggest another candidate model for RigaudBlandois (alongside Philpotts's Wainewright and Lacanaire)? In Dickens's essay 'A Flight', there is a sinister Frenchman, showily dressed, saturnine, with a hook nose, 'got up, one thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles ... transformed into a highly genteel Parisian' To consider The Companion to Little Dorrit is to direct oneself almost exclusively to the grain of the novel, to the political, social, and well-nigh quotidian conditions under which it was written and to which Dickens was characteristically responsive. The Dickens Companion series features rich and precise detail, and has demanded that its editors be of the scholarly temperament that wants to get things right and wants (so to speak) to be "in on the action." For Little Dorrit, it aims to recover the multi-sided public and private worlds present to Dickens as he set about ordering "motes of new books" in February, 1855 and the two years following. For, though set thirty years earlier, Little Dorrit is a novel supremely of its moment and also-miraculously, I am tempted to say-able to represent personal virtue transcending the conditions under which it lives. (You see I am thinking of Trilling's essay here). To sit with Trey Philpotts is to trace with him all the novel's temporal marks: the Crimean war the administrative bungling, the cholera outbreak, the wasteful neglect of its best inventive minds, the investigating committees at loggerheads on whom to blame, the reform effort "serving as a blind for continued inaction and neglect," and the financial crises brought about by a capitalist culture personified in Mr. Merdle and his wife. (It does not surprise us that with an object so different from Lionel Trilling's, Philpotts points out that the latter "accords the Crimean War one dismissive sentence.") Wishing to recover as much as may be of the fast-receding early Victorian world, Philpotts follows one path after another, seeking the testimony of contemporary writers, scanning official records, newspapers, and journals of the day, reading medical historians, and so on. On this point your reviewer does not exaggerate: Trey Philpotts is ferret, bloodhound, and energetic, happy explorer. He gives no sign of flagging in pursuit of what caught Dickens's attention in his-like our own--fact-filled world, and which Dickens used and transformed into his novel. Of things medical, we remember with a smile Flora Finching speaking of the death of her husband: "Gout flying upward soared with Mr. F. into another sphere." Dickens was proud of the image and repeated it in his letters. But it is not so silly a conceit as we may think. Philpotts finds in Buchan's Domestic Medicine (1809) the contemporary belief that gout could rise "to the head, lungs and kidneys" and kill the gout sufferer. Flora-for me eternally memorable as played by Miriam Margolyes-requires watching, for her usually cluttered and jumbled speech profits from occasional explanation. Here's one, missed by other commentators but caught by Philpotts. Why does she mix together Mr. F.'s portrait and "a pillar with a marble pavement"? Oh, yes, that's part of a conventional prop used by portrait painters of the time, and she means "pediment." I had been puzzled, too, as to why first Fanny Dorrit expresses anger and Mr. Dorrit stricken dismay when Amy walks into the Marshalsea with Mr. Nandy on her arm. (I, 31) They know Nandy as a pauper living in a workhouse, and we know they practice a condescending gentility. But why would they worry about others? The answer is that Mr. Nandy is not just a poor man wearing the poorest of clothes, but that his clothes (Philpotts says possibly "slashed with broad vertical stripes") declare him to be a pauper. The Dorrits fear that assisting a public pauper lovingly, and not patronizingly, is to lower themselves in the eyes of others. The gulf between their pretended rank and the pauper's has been bridged. Lovers of commentary and eager scanners of notes will find much to satisfy their interest, but some will not wish to follow Philpotts quite so far as he would lead. Dickens's speaking of Rome's "glorious multitude of fountains" prompts Philpotts to list and describe a dozen of them and expand into Dickens's reactions to his two visits to the ancient city as well as to quote two other 19th-century visitors. I will forgo giving other examples, for it is only fair to point out that authors of such compendia would rather be copious than scanty lest close readers be disappointed. Mention must be given to the scope and generosity of this volume. Like all of the Dickens Companion series it is carefully produced, the thirty-three illustrations are well chosen and clear--including two portraits of possible originals for Rigaud, and the layout is difficult to fault. Philpotts gives us a clear 1827 map of Southwark so that we can locate the Marshalsea, a brief but dense account of the Crimean War (most probably the novel's immediate occasion), a note on time in Little Dorrit (seconding Jenny Hartley's intuition on the importance of seasons), an appendix on Dickens's knowledge and use of foreign languages in the novel, another on the novel's original title, Nobody's Fault, and a strong bibliography which attests further to the assiduity of Mr. Philpotts. Yes, undertaking the supervision of a volume of the Companion series is an "immense task," as the general editors say. Trey Philpotts meets the challenge full on and is equal to its demands. Cet ouvrage est le neuvieme titre dans la serie coordonnee par Susan Shatto et David Paroissien commencee en 1986. Il fournit une aide inestimable au lecteur de Little Dorrit, un des romans noirs de Dickens, en rassemblant des informations tres riches sur le contexte historique complexe et souvent impenetrable : la guerre de Crimee, le " Circumlocution Office ", les grands figures de l'Etat tels Lord Palmerston ou Lord Aberdeen, ainsi que les debats de la Chambre des Communes qui viennent enrichir le texte de Dickens. Trey Philpotts offre une etude du fonctionnement de la prison de Marshalsea et des lois sur la faillite au milieu du dix-neuvieme siecle en Grande-Bretagne, ouvrant ainsi des pistes pour une comprehension plus profonde des enjeux non seulement politiques, mais narratifs et linguistiques de ce texte. Les trente-trois illustrations comprenant cartes, gravures, croquis et peintures forment un support iconographique de l'epoque victorienne (incluant egalement des peintures d'autres epoques cheres aux Victoriens) qui aide le lecteur a entrer pleinement dans les reseaux de references culturelles qui restent souvent opaques. Le tableau Caritas Romana, peint en 1670 par Lorenzo Pasinelli, sert de support a Philpotts pour elucider les references a cette scene contenues dans l'/uvre de Dickens. Little Dorrit sacrifie sa vie a son pere " a fountain of love and fidelity that never ran dry or waned ", un echo de Childe Harold's Pilgrimage de Byron. L'auteur enumere les nombreux tableaux et gravures traitant de cette scene ainsi que les pieces de theatre ou les romans de l'epoque tel North and South de Elizabeth Gaskell. Si la culture classique est soigneusement documentee, la culture populaire n'en est pas pour autant negligee : les references a la publicite, aux voyages, a la sante sont parmi les sujets abordes dans ce " companion ". Ce travail minutieux n'est nullement pedant et le texte de Philpotts reste vivant tout en se lisant agreablement et il ne peut etre qu'un outil precieux aussi bien pour les enseignants, que les etudiants et les chercheurs.