'There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been' Dickens's enthralment with places he has never been, ie., places of the imagination, remains undiminished throughout his life. Significantly, these places he has never been are peopled with people whom he has never met, stereotypes of exotic racial difference. However, unlike his attraction to exotic imaginary places, Dickens's attraction to exotic peoples undergoes a significant change largely due to his avid adult engagement with the development of scientific thought which constructed notions of race largely in terms of civilisation and savagery. In the first book-length study of its kind Dickens and Race will argue that Dickens's views on, and representations of, race were shaped by the twin poles of the development of racial science and fancy, in the form of travel narratives, the childhood favourites Robinson Crusoe and Tales of the Arabian Nights and the African travel narratives for which the adult Dickens had a particular 'insatiable relish'. Dickens and Race offers a unique contextualisation of Dickens's fictional engagements with race in relation to his lesser-known journalism, with wider nineteenth-century debates about differences between humans, with issues of empire, and with the race shows of London. Dickens and Race will be useful to academics, postgraduates and undergraduates who are interested in Charles Dickens, Victorian studies, with racial difference and empire, and childhood.'A valuable contribution to our understanding of Dickens as a global writer' Dr Cathy Waters, Reader in Victorian Studies at the University of Kent.