Taking his cue from Walter Benjamins concept of each epoch dreaming the epochthat is to follow Grahame Smith argues that Dickens novels can be regarded asprotof... » 

Taking his cue from Walter Benjamins concept of each epoch dreaming the epochthat is to follow Grahame Smith argues that Dickens novels can be regarded asprotofilmic in the detail of their language as well as their larger formalstructures. This possibility arises from Dickens creative engagement with thecity as metropolis as it emerges in the London of the 1830s plus hisimmersion in the visual entertainments of his day such as the panorama aswell as technological advances such as the railway which anticipates cinema insome of its major features. The book offers a new way of reading Dickensthrough the perspective of a form which he knew nothing of whilesimultaneously suggesting an account of his part in the manifold forces thatled to the appearance of film towards the end of the 19th century. «