Friends of the Dickens Forum,

     Here is an announcement of plans to complete a handbook to Charles 
Dickens.  We
shall follow developments with much interest.  Here is Robert Patten's 
post to us:   (pjm)
> The Handbook to Charles Dickens that Professor Pamela Dalziel initiated several years ago has been re-launched after the retirement of Professor Dalziel. The Delegates to Oxford University Press have approved a team of co-editors, John O. Jordan at the University of California Santa Cruz, Catherine Waters at the University of Kent, and Robert L. Patten at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The Delegates have also, after consulting with many outside authorities, approved contents that slightly modify and enlarge the original Dalziel proposal.
       It is expected that the Handbook will be completed in the next 
five years. As commissioned essays come in and are approved,
they will be posted on-line, prior to the publication of the volume as a 
whole. That volume will contain a collated bibliography
of all sources cited in the individual entries, and an index.  It may be 
issued in other formats thereafter. The intent of the series of
Handbooks OUP is issuing is to establish the state of the field at 
present and to suggest further lines of investigation for graduates, 
postgraduates, and scholars.
     Robert Patten @rice.edu