Facebook in 1836?

Image: Kalahari.com

In a new book called Charles Dickens's Networks: Public Transport and the Novel (2012), Jonathan Grossman, associate professor of English at UCLA, suggests that the technological advances in transport and communication during the Victorian era led to the same kind of "social networking" we experience today through Facebook, Twitter and similar websites. He points out that Dickens makes extensive reference to these "networks" in his novels, employing them to create links between socially or geographically unconnected characters - i.e. in the same way we use Facebook, or even dating websites. Read Meg Sullivan's thorough and interesting review of Grossman's book here.