For many in the Anglophone literary community, the debut of a new novel by Jonathan Franzen is a major event. This week, publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux announced that Franzen’s next work, a novel centered on the multi-continental misadventures of a young woman in search of her father, would be released in a year’s time. While fans of Franzen have yet twelve months to savor the anticipation of what publishers say will be a “stylistic departure” for the author, there are already indications of some of the literary history to which Franzen’s work will pay homage. Purity’s eponymous main character goes by the nickname ‘Pip,’ recalling the heroine of Dickens’s Great Expectations –as will come as little surprise to many who have previously spotted Dickens’s influence in Franzen’s work (among whom Harold Bloom might be the most notable, if not the most laudatory, commentator). While Franzen is not infrequently likened to Dickens and to Tolstoy in terms of the world-encompassing reach of his novels’ ambitions, references to his Dickensian streak of “social realism” are something of a refrain in criticism of his work. Whether fan, foe, or indifferent bystander to the Franzen phenom, an opportunity to reacquaint oneself with Dickens should not go unattended. Check out The Interpolated Tales from the Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, or Martin Chuzzlewit for some lesser-known gems.