In the nineteenth century, Britain became the world's first predominantly urban society, and the city became a contested space of anonymity and surveillance; isolation and contamination; sexual license and danger; self-help and mob mentality; ambition and lassitude. Charles Dickens, the era's best-selling and most critically acclaimed author, played a key role in analyzing, shaping and transmitting the new experience of urban life. From our vantage point in the most important urban space of the twenty-first century, we'll read texts covering the range of Dickens's career (Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities), focusing on the ways in which Dickens treats the city itself as his most important character. We will also read some other nineteenth-century "facts" and "fictions" of city life (including Poe, Baudelaire, Charlotte Mew, Mayhew, Engels, Georg Simmel), and nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of urbanization and the public sphere. Throughout, we will explore the impact of the city on narrative form, paying special attention to readings of Dickensian dispersal and overview; satire and allegory; and realism. This course satisfies the single-text requirement.