Charles Dickens' journals
Household Words and
All the Year Round had Extra Christmas Numbers each year, and several of these contained stories co-authored by Dickens and staff writers who shared his social activism.
A list of the collaborations between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins is available on the Victorian Web site, and the text of every journal is available on the Dickens Journals Online site.
The Perils of Certain English Prisoners was the
Household Words Extra Christmas Number for 1857, soon after the massacre at Cawnpore, and was co-authored by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
The main story deals with the capture by pirates and escape of a group of English sailors, marines, and women and their children living on an island off South America. The narrator also tells of his love for a woman far above him in social standing, and ridicules a politician in the group.
The story contains material (including 'the N word') which may be offensive to some readers. One of the minor characters is condemned for aiding the pirates, though his status as a slave is nowhere mentioned.
The source was plain text from the Dickens Journals Online site, checked against the original journal. I have silently corrected typos and inconsistencies, italicised the names of ships, and made changes to spelling and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.
This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws.
If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.
To report a copyright violation you can
contact us here.