ABSTRACT
Now that this study has concluded its journey around the world in Household Words9 eyes and examined the different categories into which it divides mankind, I would like to conclude by considering what the journal considers to be the very verge of humanity and focus, in particular, on Charles Dickens’s notorious article ‘The Noble Savage’.1 Not only does this article neatly encapsulate Household Words9 attitude to ‘savages’, but it also brings together the main strands of inquiry that this book has pursued: it illuminates Household Words’ negotiation of civilisational and biological explanations for the different races of man kind and illustrates that a definition of Englishness can ultimately be reached only through exclusion and negation. Finally, the article rein forces Household Words9 general sense of the respective worth and posi tions of Ireland, Europe, and ‘savages’ on the model of concentric circles that I introduced at the beginning.
