Despite the modern obsession with genetics and reproductive technology, very little has been written about Dickens's fascination with heredity, nor the impact that this fascination had on his novels . Dickens and Heredity is an attempt to rectify that omission by describing the hereditary theories that were current in Dickens's time and how these are reflected in his fiction. The book also argues that Dickens jettisoned his earlier belief in the prescriptive and deterministic potential of heredity after Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859.

Goldie Morgentaler is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.