NEW Dickens readalong Dombey and Son - the 2025 Dombeyalong!

What a beautiful cat and a great name x

I am popping in to say that I did a lot of work on D&S many decades ago at university. One of my cats is named Florence after Florence Dombey. I considered calling her brother Paul, but it would have been too confusing as there are several Pauls in the family. Here is Miss Floy (and yes, I do call her that sometimes.)

Thanks @Piggywaspushed and @BalloonSlayer ! It's a plot event that comes up in our July section I think.

Wordsworth Classics are looking good!

That's infuriating @cassandre - looking forward to discussing with you when we reach the appropriate bit !

P.S. I actually meant endnotes, not footnotes. I blame my mistake on the ire that still overwhelms me when I recall Sanders' perfidy.

Chiming in super late to say thanks for the discussion! I actually finished the chapters by 1 June but then didn't manage to post anything (sigh). Anyway, I'm seduced already by what seems like a strong feminist theme: the daughter being entirely overlooked in favour of the son. Dombey's sister Louisa is also a brilliantly infuriating character: a woman busily shoring up the patriarchy.

My favourite character so far I think is Susan Nipper: she is stubbornly proud and easily offended, and her child-rearing methods are much more dubious than Polly's, but really she has a heart of gold. At 14 she's practically a child herself! At least her tender age prevents her from being sacked by Mr Dombey I suppose.

@Terpsichore that's fascinating about the railway. I was also quite taken with that section of the book. I was reading along feeling vaguely puzzled as to why there should be a massive earthquake in London, and it was only at the end of the long Dickensian paragraph, in the NEXT paragraph, that the word railroad appeared and light dawned! Ha.

This is a side gripe, but the Penguin Classics edition I'm reading, introduced by Andrew Sanders, contained a huge plot spoiler in one of the very first footnotes. OMG it made me so angry! Ironically, Sanders prefaces his introduction with a spoiler warning: New readers are advised that this Introduction makes some details of the plot explicit. Great, I thought; I never read introductions before I read the book anyway, I wait till the end. Nice of this editor to warn me though.

I do however tend to skim-read footnotes as I go along. And then I looked at the footnotes, and grr!! What's the point of telling first-time readers to avoid the introduction if you're going to include a massive spoiler on the very first page of footnotes? 😡Sanders is officially in my bad books now as a literary critic. Rant over...

I have read it before and an definitely enjoying the re-read. Love the little details like the worker in the church with the bad cough, so they won't forget to tip him, and the sister who is looking in the opposite direction when her glass is being refilled but holding it completely steady.

I am already behind 🙈 I thought I'd manage the chapters in a week but the week decided to throw everything it had at me and now I'm halfway through chapter 6 I think it is. Hopefully should catch up and have something to add for the next section!

Yes, it’s slightly reassuring that even in the 1840s they were talking about how 'progress' was rushing ahead and leaving them behind!

I also liked Solomon Gills musings on being out of kilter with the changing times. It's how I feel with AI.

Also 'Biler'. 'Do you mean to tell me that you have named your child after a boiler?!'

I am also loving it so far and hadn't heard much about this book.

I was living in the area when the Eurostar got moved to Kings Cross from Waterloo and they avoided Old St Pancras Church which has Dickens links. Loving the parallels with old and current London as can still really feel the areas I think.

Poor little Florence! I'm hoping she'll prove that girls aren't a disappointment at some point.

At the risk of an obvious point it’s very interesting to me in a pre tv age how much time and effort authors, especially Dickens, put into describing characters and how ingenious they had to be to avoid listing a load of physical characteristics. It’s also amusing that these were written for the widest possible audiences and yet are now regarded as ‘serious’ literature.

People in grand houses often called eg all cooks ‘Mrs Jones’ or all butlers ‘Smith’ because the idea of the employers having to learn new names as new staff came/went was obviously unthinkable. But Dombey isn’t at that level - it’s more to do with his snobbish entitlement I’d think.

Yes I didn’t know if that was to do with rebranding something as your possession or just because Toodles is too silly a name to be associated with the great Dombeys

The relief at Polly’s kindness to Florence and now she has lost that.

I love it so far - I keep taking photos of paragraphs and sending them to people to read. I was so confused by the earthquake description, it didn’t seem to fit with the rest. And then the reveal that he was talking about the construction of the railway made me laugh, and his cynicism. (I have never read Dickens before so will maybe start to recognise this kind of thing.) It reminded me too of the chaos of Crossrail, I feel like London is very recognisable.

I’m sorry to lose Polly, I hope she reappears.

In my ignorance I was expecting a cast of thousands and to forget who’s who, but it’s so nicely paced, and the characters so rich, it’s not like that at all and just a lot of fun to read. You really feel like you are in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing.

Thanks for getting us started Piggy! Not sure I can add much to previous posters’ thoughts. I found this had a greater depth of feeling than some of Dickens earlier, more comic/episodic books. I felt genuinely sorry for Polly having to leave her own children, and for poor little unloved Florence. It also seemed that, although Dombey obviously prized his son, he was not that concerned with his welfare on a practical level - dithering on selecting a wet nurse when his son was newly born, then dismissing the only ‘mother’ the baby had ever known when he was just six months old.

Also felt the lack of Dickens’ usual likeable comic relief young man side character - there’s no Mark Tapley or Tom Pinch here. (What I wouldn’t give for a Dick Swiveller even…) But perhaps he’ll turn up later.

Really enjoyed the opening chapters. I thought the birth of little Paul and the abduction of Florence were the most gripping. And Polly Tootle/Richards was a lovely character. I missed the bit about the railways - will go back for a re-read!