| On January 22, 1934 in London, a column appeared in The Times under the headline "A Manuscript of Dickens: 'The Life of Our Lord' to be Published" (Times January 22, 1934) which announced what should have been a momentous addition to both the Dickens canon and its related body of criticism. As it was, however, the literary value of The Life of Our Lord was largely overshadowed by a focus on its complex publication history and new and controversial biographical information revealed about its author at the time of its emergence. In his 2009 book Dickens, Christianity and The Life of Our Lord, Gary Colledge has emerged as one of the only scholars in a long tradition of Dickens scholarship to recognize the significant insight this work provides into his religious and literary voice. This paper will begin by examining the unique literary archeology of the text of TLOL and its surrounding literary criticism in order to gain an understanding of why it has been underappreciated. It will then align itself with Colledge's argument that TLOL "acts as an index of sorts, a reference point, that provides a clarifying voice with regard to the nature and substance of the Christian character of Dickens's own religious thought and emergent worldview" (Colledge 2009 15), and will return to his novels of the 1840s and 50s to apply this lens to his fiction. In doing so, it will suggest a reading of TLOL as a way of revealing not only the specific version of Christianity displayed in his fiction, but also his particular view of narrative itself as a means of constructing faith. |
