ABSTRACT
Inextricably linked to the emigration question are the issues of national identity and national prosperity-both of which were highly problematic categories for Dickens. The complexity of his opinions on English national identity stem from the ways in which the national sense of self was repeatedly re-fashioned throughout Queen Victoria's reign, largely as a response to the rise of a capitalist economy and the expansion of the Empire. As Peter Scott has so astutely commented, "Britain is an invented nation, not so much older than the United States9, and it is this process of invention that Dickens interrogates and analyzes throughout his work.2
