ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Charles Dickensian literary texts the curl-paper makes its own particular kind of inscription, an inscription which could be seen to be in critical relation to more conventional modes of literary output. In Barnaby Rudge, Dickens describes a housemaid's 'turbulent' feelings on the departure of her beloved. For Dickens, the relationship between art and vanity was more volatile, and his handling of curl-papers more pained, than these other writers. The chapter shows that curl-paper is one of the many examined material objects that may reveal relationships, telling us particular stories about the class, gender, and subjectivity of individuals in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth-century equivalent of being caught in one's housecoat and curlers, curl-papers 'became' as one Edwardian critic notes 'the stock property of author and artist for comic purposes.' The use of curl-papers is difficult to trace, but their popularity for lay use in the nineteenth century may have been due to accessibility of cheaper paper.
