Dickens Search combines book history with digital tools, offering a browsable and searchable database of the works of Charles Dickens (1812—1870) that draws primarily on first editions transcribed by Dickens scholars.

This database is still in development. Currently users can:

• Browse the most complete corpus of Dickens's verse ever created, bringing together previously published selections with newly-identified poems, autograph album contributions and epitaphs
• Explore Dickens's short fiction and Christmas Numbers
• Read Dickens's Christmas Books
• View an expanding collection of Dickens's speeches
• Search for texts using parameters including keywords, publication, date, and data range
• Compare different texts
• Explore Ngrams, which allow you to view the most common words in each collection (e.g. poetry or short stories) and search for word/phrase frequency over time
• Download data in a range of formats (including TEI)

The ultimate goal of the project is to provide free access to all of Dickens's works, including serials, first editions, journalism, prefaces and plays in addition to the existing collections.

We will be adding new digital tools and functionality including topic modelling, data visualisations of Dickens's works, and the ability to explore conceptual shift using word vectors.

Dickens Search, launched in 2021, was developed by Dr Emily Bell and Dr Lydia Craig and is still expanding. Please use our contact form to get in touch if you have feedback, suggestions or queries.

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