The first to appeal as much to scullery maids as to Queen Victoria, to the rural farmer as well as to the urban professional, Charles Dickens virtually single-handedly called popular culture into being in England. Alongside the reading of three important Dickens novels — Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and Hard Times — we will explore both the history and theory of popular culture. How is “popular” defined? Who makes and who consumes popular culture? While we will be interested primarily in investigating Victorian culture, we will also examine one or two contemporary adaptations, asking what happens, for example, when Great Expectations is transformed into a late twentieth-century American film.