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Presents a theoretical approach to analysing the effects of minimum wages on employment which is intended to conform more with the functioning of actual labour markets than do other popular models traditionally used to analyse the likely effects of minimum wages on employment. The model has the desirable property of not only allowing for the negative effect predicted by conventional models, but also permiting a non‐negative impact which is consistent with several recent empirical pieces of work. Examines the employment effects of the industry‐level system of minimum wages which operated in the UK until September 1993. Results reported are not in line with the orthodox model as they suggest a neutral or positive impact of Wages Council minimum wages on employment between 1978 and 1990.

THE note of the Conference at Harrogate was the question of unemployment in relation to libraries. The arguments advanced were intended for the wider public rather than for librarians, and reproduced a now fairly familiar argument that the issues of books from libraries have increased by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the depression. It is quite clear that many men who normally would not read quite so much have turned to books for consolation and guidance. The fact that branch libraries were closed at Glasgow as an economy measure, and were afterwards re‐opened under the force of public opinion, would emphasize the opinion generally held that in times of economic stress it may be an even greater economy to increase expenditure upon libraries than to curtail it. This argument is, of course, in a region which the average material mind of our governors cannot always reach. It is nevertheless true, and the Conference provided ample evidence of its truth.

CHARLES DICKENS'S immense popularity when his novels first appeared in weekly and monthly parts, and his continuing popularity today is due, above all, to his skill in creating memorable characters whose fortunes the reader compulsively follows. His characters show their creator's remarkable powers of observation, particularly in small details, so that the reader constantly stops to think, ‘How true to life!’ or ‘How like old so‐and‐so!’ Many of them were based on real people—his father (Mr Micawber), his mother (Mrs Nickleby), himself (David Copperfield), but they are so transmuted that the originals did not recognize themselves. In Bleak House he had to modify his sketch of Harold Skimpole, who was too recognizably Leigh Hunt.

The enormous growth in publishing in Victorian England is surveyed from its origins in the eighteenth century to the demise, or survival, of principal publishing houses in the twentieth century. The major publishers ‐ Longman, Murray, Smith Elder, Chapman and Hall, Colburn, Bentley, Heinemann, Methuen and Macmillan ‐ are discussed in relation to their authors and publishing successes and failures. The relation between the full‐length book and the major literary journals is discussed and the capitalist, risk taking nature of publishing as a commercial enterprise is emphasised.

ONE MUST BEGIN with Dickens. A chapter by Christopher Hibbert in Charles Dickens, 1812–1870: centenary volume, edited by E. W. F. Tomlin, and The London of Charles Dickens, published by London Transport with aid from the Dickens Fellowship, make a similar study here superfluous; both are illustrated, the latter giving instructions for reaching surviving Dickensian buildings. Neither warns the reader of Dickens's conscious and unconscious imaginative distortion, considered in Humphrey House's The Dickens World. Dickens himself imagined Captain Cuttle hiding in Switzerland and Paul Dombey's wild waves saying ‘Paris’; ‘the association between the writing and the place of writing is so curiously strong in my mind.’ Author and character may be in two places at once. ‘I could not listen at my fireside, for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead.’ (Our Mutual Friend)

Good morning, Sir Comfrey. Morning, No.2. What the Dickens have you got there, an unpublished 3‐volume novella? Send it on to Richard Branson. Have it cleaned up! Ha, ha!

The public image of a profession is an important barometer of the group’s status in society. Media images play a key role in this respect, projecting the ideas and values of the group and negotiating shifts in public perception of their identity. This paper focuses on two periods in Britain when shifts in managerial culture resulted in changes in the core values of the group; the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948 and the introduction of the internal market within the NHS in the late 1980s. In both periods, nursing leaders sought to change the public image of the profession through altering their relationship with their patients/clients and reconceptualising notions of service. The focus of analysis is the role of popular film and television images in negotiating these shifts in professional values.

A history of twentieth‐century censorship. Shakespeare's company staged the first production of The Merchant of Venice sometime between 30 July 1596 and 22 July 1598. From the day of that presentation, it is probable that the play has annoyed, perhaps even offended, many who have seen or read it, the source of the offense being the disparaging portrait of a major character, Shylock. On the stage for many years, there have been radically discrepant interpretations of the Jewish usurer. Since the day of Sir Henry Irving, actors and directors have often chosen to present Shylock in a way that transforms the role from that which Elizabethan playgoers may have seen and heard, or may have thought they had seen and heard, to the complex, ambivalent personality depicted in all productions since Irving first projected Shylock as a tragic hero.

BOOKS are among the greatest and most wonderful achievements of human genius, they are also a powerful means of struggle for progress. The book accompanies man all his life; it is a creation of his brain and soul. It reflects the life of mankind and is the result of collective efforts of author and publisher, type‐setter and illustrator. But foremost a book is always and everywhere a social and political phenomenon. One of the most apt evaluations of the book was given by V. I. Lenin in 1917, when he was known to state to A. V. Lunacharsky, “The book is a great force indeed”.