Monahan operates The Inkwell Works, an editorial service, and teaches English literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In this essay, Monahan places David Edgar's adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel in its historical context and explains its stage success in terms of production techniques Edgar devised to translate the novel's Victorian insights to the 1970s English stage.

The first inkling of an English stage production of Dickens occurred to director Trevor Nunn when he visited the Soviet Union in 1977 and realized the Gorky Theater was engaged in transforming The Pickwick Papers into drama. Nunn discovered, in fact, that stage productions of Dickens were commonly done in the Soviet Union. Two years later, in England, Nunn, along with co-director John Caird, began to pool ideas for a similar venture. The hope was to create a play that presented on stage the whole of a Charles Dickens...