Teaching Aids

Resources for Teachers
The Dickens Project is pleased to offer a number of free teaching resources, as well as publications for sale to the general public and to the teaching community. These resources and publications are of significant value both to those who teach Dickens at the middle school, high school, community college, or university level, and to those who wish to enrich their personal experience of Dickens and the Victorian era.


TEACHING DICKENS. A Masterpiece Guide was developed by WGBH to accompany the 2009 Masterpiece Classic broadcast of “The Tales of Charles Dickens,” which includes 3 brand-new Dickens adaptations. Click here to download a free PDF of the guide and for more information about the Dickens series.

You can find links to other teaching guides, including Oliver Twist and The Complete Jane Austen here.

MASTERPIECE ARCHIVES. The Masterpiece Theater web archives include resource-rich pages developed in conjunction with various Dickens adaptations. The pages include Dickens timelines, essays on Dickens and the Victorian period, interviews, bibliographies, and information about translating novel to film.

DICKENS BIBLIOGRAPHIES. The Dickens Project provides an archive of the Dickens bibliographies used at past Dickens Universes.

DOORWAY TO DICKENS. "Doorway to Dickens" draws primarily on the two 1994 BBC adaptations of Hard Times and Martin Chuzzlewit, but it also refers to other works by Dickens and earlier television adaptations. The kit contains the following resources:

  • A 90-minute DVD that provides an overview of Victorian society, the social and economic circumstances of women, Dickens's attitude toward love and marriage, his style and characterization, Dickens's biography, and the plot and themes of Hard Times and Martin Chuzzlewit.
  • An activity workbook that closely follows the sequence of the video, offering classroom activities, background information, photocopiable resources, and key passages from the novels.
  • A resource anthology of contemporary articles, books, literary criticism, and other materials that provide contextual information about Hard Times, Martin Chuzzlewit, and other Dickens texts.

Price: $15.00 plus tax and shipping 
Product Code: D2DBBC

DICKENS RESOURCE HANDBOOK SERIES. Designed to make Dickens's novels more accessible to non-specialist readers, this series of handbooks focuses separately on three frequently taught novels: Great Expectations, Hard Times, and David Copperfield. Each newly-packaged resource kit includes a several hundred-page text of social, historical, and literary commentary, a DVD and audio tape of the Dickens Players performing scenes from the novel, and a slide collection on PowerPoint of relevant scenes from nineteenth-century England.

  • Hard Times: HTKIT. Complete kit $20.00 plus tax and shipping.
  • David Copperfield: DCKIT. Complete kit $20.00 plus tax and shipping.
  • Great Expectations Booklets: GEKIT $20.00 plus tax and shipping.

A LITTLE BOOK ABOUT A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Linda Rosewood Hooper's A Little Book About A Christmas Carol is an illuminating text which gives background information on Dickens's life and world at the time he wrote one of the best-known – and best-loved – works in all of English literature.

Price: Free
Formats: View online or download the PDF

CHARLES DICKENS AND HIS PUBLISHERS and DICKENS ON THE ROMANTIC SIDE OF FAMILIAR THINGS. As part of its research mission, the Dickens Project publishes original scholarly monographs and reprints major scholarly studies of Dickens that have gone out of print. Currently the Project offers Charles Dickens and His Publishers by Robert L. Patten and Dickens on the Romantic Side of Familiar Things: Bleak House and the Novel Tradition by Robert Newsom. Both books are available to the public in paperback editions at prices much below that of the original cloth volumes.

  • CHARLES DICKENS AND HIS PUBLISHERS
    Price: $6.00 plus tax and shipping
    Product Code: PAT
  • DICKENS ON THE ROMANTIC SIDE OF THINGS
    Price: $6.00 plus tax and shipping
    Product Code: NEW

WHAT THE DICKENS: A GUIDE TO MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT AND HARD TIMES. A 32-page BBC viewers' guide to Hard Times and Martin Chuzzlewit is also available. This publication is an introduction to the two novels and includes background information on Dickens's life at the time that he wrote the books, the themes he explored, and the problems of adaptation to the modern television screen.

Price: $2.00 plus tax and shipping
Product Code: MCHT

GREAT EXPECTATIONS EDUCATIONAL VIDEO PACK
Price: $25.00 plus tax and shipping
Product Code: DCPK

DAVID COPPERFIELD EDUCATIONAL VIDEO PACK
Price: $25.00 plus tax and shipping
Product Code: DCPK



ORDERING INFORMATION:

Shipping costs (regular US mail) within the US are included in all prices. CA Residents please add 8.25% sales tax. All orders are shipped upon receipt of payment or Purchase Order.

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The Dickens Project
UCSC
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

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We accept institutional Purchase Orders. Please mail original PO to the address above.