Mugby Junction

By Charles Dickens

Mugby Junction is a collection of short stories centered around a fictionalized English railway station. In it, a man arrives at the station and befriends a workman and his invalid daughter. The subsequent short stories recount his explorations of the various lines leading to and from Mugby Junction. Not really a Christmas story per se, it is instead a story about a grumpy old man finding the Christmas spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamscape Media
• Release date: Oct 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781974917068

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.

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MUGBY JUNCTION

By

CHARLES DICKENS

This edition published by Dreamscape Media LLC, 2018

www.dreamscapeab.com * [e-mail]

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About Charles Dickens:

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.

Source: Wikipedia

Mugby Junction

BARBOX BROTHERS

I

Guard! What place is this?

Mugby Junction, sir.

A windy place!

Yes, it mostly is, sir.

And looks comfortless indeed!

Yes, it generally does, sir.

Is it a rainy night still?

Pours, sir.

Open the door. I’ll get out.

You’ll have, sir, said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and looking at the tearful face of his watch by the light of his lantern as the traveller descended, three minutes here.

More, I think.—For I am not going on.

Thought you had a through ticket, sir?

So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of it. I want my luggage.

Please to come to the van and point it out, sir. Be good enough to look very sharp, sir. Not a moment to spare.

The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller hurried after him. The guard got into it, and the traveller looked into it.

Those two large black portmanteaus in the corner where your light shines. Those are mine.

Name upon ’em, sir?

Barbox Brothers.

Stand clear, sir, if you please. One. Two. Right!

Lamp waved. Signal lights ahead already changing. Shriek from engine. Train gone.

Mugby Junction! said the traveller, pulling up the woollen muffler round his throat with both hands. At past three o’clock of a tempestuous morning! So!

He spoke to himself. There was no one else to speak to. Perhaps, though there had been any one else to speak to, he would have preferred to speak to himself. Speaking to himself, he spoke to a man within five years of fifty either way, who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire; a man of pondering habit, brooding carriage of the head, and suppressed internal voice; a man with many indications on him of having been much alone.

He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the rain and by the wind. Those two vigilant assailants made a rush at him. Very well, said he, yielding. It signifies nothing to me, to what quarter I turn my face.

Thus, at Mugby Junction, at past three o’clock of a tempestuous morning, the traveller went where the weather drove him.

Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, coming to the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable extent at Mugby Junction) and looking out upon the dark night, with a yet darker spirit-wing of storm beating its wild way through it, he faced about, and held his own as ruggedly in the difficult direction, as he had held it in the easier one. Thus, with a steady step, the traveller went up and down, up and down, up and down, seeking nothing, and finding it.

A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end. Half miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead,

Reviews for Mugby Junction

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This often quite loosely connected series of short stories appeared in the Christmas 1866 edition of All The Year Round, a magazine that Dickens was then editing, while also supplying much of the content, though four stories here are by other, less well known authors. The collection is set around the railways of the fictional town of Mugby where the narrator of the loose overarching framework finds himself in the middle of the night. By far the most famous of these stories is the haunting and much anthologised The Signalmen, the second most famous Dickens ghost story. The Boy at Mugby is Dickens's hilarious satire of the catering in a British train station cafe of the time - complaints about railway food are nothing new! Most of the contributions by other authors are also pretty good, some mystery, with a few gothic twists. Overall, a very good collection.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 This is a really interesting little book. Written as a series of 8 short stories, it begins when a man stops at an obscure junction station in the Midlands in the middle of a dark stormy night. The junction has 7 lines that leave it, heading in different directions. The idea is fairly simple, there is a story about what happenes down each of the lines. It doesn't quite work out like that, in that only one of the stories actually takes place on a voyage down one of these lines. The stories become journeys into the human psyche rather than through English geography. Written by Dickens and 4 different writers, the stories are a bit patchy, if I'm honest. That doesn't mean it's not without interest though. The story of the Signalman is a very quite scary ghost story - not at all in the usual line of Dickens. In all of them the railway runs as a theme, the characters all work on, in and with the railways. That makes the things hang together, but I did feel it would have benefitted from a final rounding story to match the initial opener.
As with any short story collection, there are peaks and troughs, but this went very well with a day spent travelling by train.