ABSTRACT
Foregrounding the novel's own often overlooked identity as a periodical serial text published in All the Year Round this chapter will situate it alongside a number of serialized novels about Australian and Canadian settler emigration which were published in equivalent journals from mid-century. Charles Dicken argues that reading Great Expectations in the light of these predominantly domestic and significantly serialized novels affords a means of both refining our understanding of its engagement with colonial history and reconceptualizing its troubled preoccupations with home, departure and nostalgic return. Accordingly, Dicken shall reference Cedar Creek alongside his primary analysis of The Caxtons and Frank Layton as a means of illustrating both the transnational range of the settlement-themed novel, and the duration of its currency into the early 1860s. Just as Great Expectations can be viewed as being troubled by the same issues which concern other more directly emigration-themed texts, it is Dicken's contention that it also plays out its countering drives towards settlement.
