Ep. 21. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (with Holly Furneaux)

What this episode covers

In this festive holiday special, I talk with Prof. Holly Furneaux about Charles Dickens' classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46]  Professor Holly Furneaux [https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/furneauxh] teaches and researches Victorian literature and culture at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality, and the history of emotions. Following her first book Queer Dickens [https://bookshop.org/p/books/queer-dickens-erotics-families-masculinities-professor-of-english-literature-holly-furneaux-ph-d/7c388dd3a2fda563?ean=9780199566099&next=t&next=t&source=IndieBound](2009) she has continued her fascination with Dickens. She was adviser on the BBC series Dickensian and an organiser of the annual Dickens Day for over a decade. Holly's latest book is Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict (2025), which develops her interests in war and emotion, explored in Military Men of Feeling (2016). She is now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period. Episode references: * Dickens, Household Words [https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words.html] * Preface to Bleak House [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm#cP] * Michael Slater, Charles Dickens [https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/charles-dickens-michael-slater/3603864?ean=9780300170931] * Paul Davis, 'Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture-Text' [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41211762] * Charles Dickens, 'Somebody's Luggage' [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1414/1414-h/1414-h.htm] Follow the show on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/booksupclose].  Please leave feedback here [https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ur7mk6rEMUevXdc1sJfq2-MtVOsMawJDpBA3aJ944dVUMkI4OTA3N0dBMUE2SDVJWlpaOE8zNlo4NC4u]. Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd [https://www.instagram.com/chrisllloyd9].