Grace Moore, Dickens and Empire: Discourses of Class, Race and Colonialism in the Works of Charles Dickens (The Nineteenth Century Series) (Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 210 pp. + xii, $89.95, cloth. Among major Victorian writers we think more readily of Thackeray and Kipling than of Dickens in connection with the British Empire, or as reflecting on British colonialism or on its control of huge areas of the world. Dickens did not consider the Empire in any general sense. He said nothing directly about it as a source of wealth, problematic or not, and writes only once (I believe) of Britain's holding a country by force. (Pilgrim Letters, v11, 267) In his letters he mentioned the Empire as such just three times in all. The colonies to be sure had their uses. He was interested for example in emigration. Two of his sons went to Australia, two more to India, and one of the latter went on to Canada. He and Mrs. Coutts set up Urania Cottage with the express purpose of sending the residents abroad, mostly to Australia. They did so responsibly, looking into such things as the demand for British labor there.
