SOURCE: "They Dies Everywhere . . . ," in Charles Dickens Resurrectionist, The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1982, pp.1-36.

In the following essay, Sanders examines Charles Dickens ' portrayals of death and of deathbed scenes and asserts that they reflect both Victorian fascination with death and concern about the very high mortality rate of urban-dwellers in the nineteenth century.

Andrew Sanders on Dickens:

The prevalence of death in [Dickens'] fiction reflected a familiar enough reality to his readers; he neither killed characters for the market . . . nor for fictional convenience. . . . Dickens wrote of dying children because so many nineteenth-century families, including his own] [lost children in infancy; he described pious adult death] beds because he had attended them; he expressed grief at the loss of fictional characters because he so sorely felt the loss of friends and relatives. .. .

Andrew Sanders, in an introduction to Charles Dickens Resurrectionist, The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1982.

The death-rate in...