The DDNP is digitizing and exploring Charles Dickens’s working notes for his novels. Currently under construction, this project aims to interactively demonstrate how Victorian readers experienced serial novels as forms-in-process rather than as complete texts. Manuscripts of the working notes survive in whole or in part for ten of Dickens novels: The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and Edwin Drood. Beginning with his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, the DDNP will gradually digitize and annotate all of these notes and place them alongside, and in the context of, the serial parts of his novels, some of which were published in weekly and some in monthly parts.
This project is directed by Anna Gibson, formerly a doctoral candidate and PhD Lab member at Duke University, who is now assistant professor of English at Duquesne University. Funding and support for this project has generously provided by Duquesne University, the Wimmer Family Foundation, Duquesne’s NEH Endowment fund, the Duke Ph.D. Lab, and NINES funding for DHSI. My thanks also to the Pierpont Morgan Library, home of the Our Mutual Friend manuscript.
Project History
Anna Marie Gibson began this project as a doctoral candidate and PhD Lab member at Duke University.
People Involved With The Project
- Anna Gibson, Assistant Professor of English at Duquesne University (Content Entry; Designer; Project Manager; Primary Investigator)