Jon Johanning wrote:

>I'm not enough of a scholar ofctorian English (specifically, British
>English) to know what the connotation of the "N" word was then; ...

Just a few years ago, in an award winning Broadway musical version of
*Huckleberry Finn* (the title of which was something like *The River*,
IIRC), the so-called N word was freely used where called for, to the
everlasting credit of everyone involved in the production.

Walter Meyer