Dickens's "The Signalman" and Information Problems in the Railway Age
2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tech.2001.0133
ISSN1097-3729
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis
ResumoThis examination of public attitudes toward railway signaling and railway safety takes as its starting point a short story by Charles Dickens titled "The Signalman." This story first appeared as a chapter of Mugby Junction, the 1866 extra Christmas number of Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round. 1 Its title was an obvious play on Rugby Junction, an important stop on the London and Northwestern Railway and the Midland Railway, and at the time probably the most well-known junction station in England. For Dickens, Mugby Junction served as both an organizing device and a metaphor, naming a place where multiple narratives cross and interact, and where possibilities for various beginnings and various endings are drawn together. The story's initial reception was unremarkable, apart from arousing some mild indignation on the part of a railway official and two pamphlet writers, who sought to defend the refreshment room at Rugby Junction. Dickens had a longstanding gripe about railway refreshment rooms, and an incident of rudeness that he had experienced there in April 1866 provided him with comic material for a satire on such establishments in the third chapter of Mugby Junction. 2 Largely in response to the railway material [End Page 436] in Mugby Junction, Dickens was asked to speak at the annual dinner of the Railway Benevolent Institution in 1868, where he gave an amusing speech in praise of railway servants and in support of the institution. 3
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