Note 1 to Chapter 6 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.
The excellence of the novel's humour has usually been recognized. R. C. Churchill, for instance, maintains that it is "not only Dickens's best comic novel but the greatest work of comic genius in the whole of English literature" (p. 120).
Last modified: 3 May 2001