"If the true story of the matter is to be told": Dickens and the Neapolitan Prisoners

Abstract:This paper considers Dickens's story "The Italian Prisoner" to argue that the author's reluctance to write on the Italian Risorgimento was not due to opportunism on his part. Dickens wished the Neapolitan prisoners could speak for themselves and only when he understood no story was forthcoming, did he set about writing it. The story eventually focuses around a huge bottle of wine that an ex-prisoner entrusts to the narrator to take back to his benefactor in England. The bottle becomes a symbol of the difficulties any narrator faces when seeking to bring a true story from one culture into another.