NEW Dickens readalong Dombey and Son - the 2025 Dombeyalong!

[Piggywaspushed]

Join me in the next Dickens readalong, Dombeyalongadingdong! This is probably the last big Dickens we haven't done.
The novel was originally published by Dickens in 19 instalments, all exactly 32 pages long (I do find this obsession with 32 pages intriguing- writing to such an exact brief must have involved quite a lot of editing and , as I recall from Nickleby, much padding at times!) and then published in full in 1848. I know nothing of this one really - except the name Paul Dombey sticks in my head. Apparently , this one is more focused on marriage and is read as marking a change in Dickens' presentation of women. Seafaring is involved but this is also his first book about the arrival of railways which Dickens was not altogether sold on. This period was referred to as 'railway mania'. It's really quite hard to conceptualise the rapid progress and change surrounding Dickens.

This one has not been on TV for a long time. Andrew Davies had been working on a version - but it was ditched because it was felt we had had too many 'bonnet dramas'. I swear we have still had many since but rather heavily 'adapted' and maybe Sarah Phelps hasn't read Dombey...

I propose condensing this to an eight month read, using Dickens' shorter sections as a guide . We begin in May, as follows:
May - Chapters 1 - 7
June- Chapters 8-13
July- Chapters 14-22
August - Chapters 23-31
September - Chapters 32-38
October - Chapters 39-45
November - Chapters 46-51
and finishing for Christmas in
December - Chapters 52 - end

Considerably more chapters in this one, so I am guessing some must be quite short.

I'll link Katie's intro in my next post.

Anyone and everyone welcome!

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

I found it so darkly Dickensianly funny that thy arbitrarily called Polly Richards as if that was a completely sensible thing to do.

I presume that was a genuine thing? Slaves were definitely just assigned names on the plantations.

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

Both, I suspect.

Tox and Chick apparently not, however!

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.

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.

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.

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?!'

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

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!

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.

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...

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

I'm also cross on your behalf. I have a Wordsworth edition which tend to give a smattering of begrudging footnotes, mainly leaving the reader in the dark - so no spoilers for me!

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

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

Wordsworth Classics are looking good!

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.)

Oh , gorgeous!

What a beautiful cat and a great name x

Just a reminder that we will convene tomorrow . I shall try to post something sensible through the heat fug.

Are we like Terry Pratchett trolls and our brains work better in the cold? I’m in midwinter in the south of New Zealand, so I might just have the edge…

We are currently under a blanket of cloud and our peak temperature will be 18 degrees today (Co. Cork). So I have no excuses not to make sense! No heat fug here.

I have two chapters to read today. I think of Paddington Bear's hard stare when little Paul sizes someone up.

I'm still admiring Florence the cat @CromartyForth She is so pretty.

Belated hello to @cassandre on the thread. There's no sign of Susan Nipper this time round as far as I know. I agree that she is a brilliant character. That was so annoying about the endnote spoiler. I would be cross about it too.

Am heading to Centerparcs today so will be going from temperate west of Scotland into 33 deg fug. Am expecting a couple of grumpy kids soon! I'll likely hide away tonight and finish this month's chapters.
Also, only four years after starting it, I finally completed Little Dorrit a few days ago!

You'll get a nip of Nipper!

Congrats on finishing Dorrit! Hallelujah!