Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (
/ˈtʃɑrlz ˈdɪkɪnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English
writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of
the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's
most memorable fictional characters.[1] HP Pavilion dv5z-1200
CTO Keyboard
/ˈtʃɑrlz ˈdɪkɪnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English
writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of
the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's
most memorable fictional characters.[1] HP Pavilion dv5z-1200
CTO Keyboard
During his lifetime Dickens's works enjoyed unprecedented
popularity and fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was fully
recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to
enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.[2][3] HP Pavilion DV6-1000
Keyboard
Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a
factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Though he had little
formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. He edited a
weekly journal for 20 years, HP Pavilion DV6-1000
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wrote 15 novels and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction
articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter
writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other
social reforms. HP Pavilion
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Dickens rocketed to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a
few years he had become an international literary celebrity, celebrated for his
humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most
published in monthly or weekly instalments, HP Pavilion
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pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction,
which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.[4][5] The instalment format allowed Dickens
to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and
character development based on such feedback.[5] HP Pavilion
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For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the
way Miss Mowcher in David
Copperfield seemed to reflect her
disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive
lineaments.[6] Fagin
in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence, Ikey Solomon;[7] HP Pavilion DV6-1001xx
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His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from
some of his friends, as they read episodes.[8] In the same novel, both Lawrence
Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', HP Pavilion
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a beadle at Salisbury Square.[9] His plots were carefully constructed,
and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives.[10] 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.[11] HP Pavilion
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Dickens was regarded as the 'literary colossus' of his age.[12] His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of
the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues
to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been
praised by fellow writers—from Leo
Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George
Orwell—for itsrealism, HP Pavilion
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comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry Jamesand Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological
depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. HP Pavilion
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Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at Landport in Portsea,
the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth
Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily on
duty in the district. Very soon after his birth the family moved to Norfolk
Street, HP Pavilion
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Bloomsbury, and then, when he was four, to Chatham, then in Kent, where he spent his formative
years until the age of 11. His early years seem to have been idyllic, though he
thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of
boy".[13] HP Pavilion
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Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, especially
the picaresque novels of Tobias
Smollett and Henry Fielding. HP Pavilion
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He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by a
near-photographic memory of people and events, which he used in his writing.[14]His
father's brief period as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office gave him a few years of
private education, first at a dame-school,
and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter,
in Chatham.[15] HP Pavilion
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This period came to an abrupt end when, because of financial
difficulties, the Dickens family moved from Kent to Camden Town in London in 1822. Prone to living
beyond his means,[17] John
Dickens was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark London in 1824. HP Pavilion
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Shortly afterwards, his wife and the youngest children joined him
there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, was boarded
with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, in Camden Town.[18] Roylance was "a reduced
[impoverished] old lady, long known to our family",HP Pavilion
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whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and
embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived
in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell,
"a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old
wife" and lame son, in Lant
Street in The Borough.[19] They provided the inspiration for the
Garlands in The Old Curiosity
Shop.[20] HP Pavilion
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On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music—he spent the
day at the Marshalsea.[21]Dickens would later use the prison as a
setting in Little Dorrit.
To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school
and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, HP Pavilion
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on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where
he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking.
The strenuous and often cruel working conditions made a lasting impression on
Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, HP Pavilion
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becoming the foundation of
his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours
of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he
wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age".[22] As he recalled to John Forster (from The Life of Charles Dickens): HP Pavilion
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The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of
the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house,
abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its
wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats
swarming down in the cellars, HP Pavilion
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and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the
stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly
before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor,
looking over the coal-barges and the river. HP Pavilion
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There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work
was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and
then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to
clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of
ointment from an apothecary's shop. HP Pavilion
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When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch
of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again
with more pots. HP Pavilion
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Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on
similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the
first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the
knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long
afterwards, in Oliver Twist.[22] HP Pavilion
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After a few months in Marshalsea, John Dickens's paternal
grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him the sum of £450. On the
expectation of this legacy, Dickens was granted release from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens
arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea,[23] for the home of Mrs. Roylance. HP Pavilion
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Although Dickens eventually attended the Wellington House Academy
in North London, his mother Elizabeth Dickens did not immediately remove him from
the boot-blacking factory. The incident may have done much to confirm Dickens's
view that a father should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere
inside the home. HP Pavilion
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"I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can
forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back". His mother's
failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards
women. HP Pavilion
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" The Wellington House Academy was not a good school.
"Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by
the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down
atmosphere, are embodied in Mr. Creakle's Establishment in David Copperfield."[26] HP Pavilion
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Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore,
attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's
Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. Then,
having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time,
he left to become a freelance reporter. HP Pavilion
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A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able
to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.[27][28] This education was to inform works
such as Nicholas Nickleby, HP Pavilion
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Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak House—whose vivid
portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to
enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of
Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who
were forced by circumstances to "go to law".HP Pavilion
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In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to
have been the model for the character Dora in David
Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the
relationship by sending her to school in Paris.[29] HP Pavilion
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Journalism and early novels
In 1832, at age 20, Dickens was energetic, full of good humour,
enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear sense of what he
wanted to become, yet knew he wanted to be famous. He was drawn to the theatre
and landed an acting audition at Covent
Garden, HP Pavilion
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for which he prepared meticulously but which he missed because of
a cold, ending his aspirations for a career on the stage. A year later he
submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk" to the London
periodical, Monthly Magazine.[30] He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn becoming a political journalist, HP Pavilion
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reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to
cover election campaigns for the Morning
Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed
his first collection of piecesSketches by Boz—Boz being a family
nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years—published in 1836.[31][32][nb
1] He continued to
contribute to and edit journals throughout his literary career.[30] HP Pavilion
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The success of these sketches led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymour's engraved
illustrations in a monthly letterpress.
Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, HP Pavilion
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who wanted to write a connected series or sketches, hired
"Phiz" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two
per instalment) for the story. The resulting story was the The Pickwick Papers with the final instalment selling
40,000 copies.[30] HP Pavilion
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In November 1836 Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a
position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner.[33] In 1836 as he finished the last
instalments of The Pickwick
Papers he began writing the
beginning instalments ofOliver Twist—writing as many as 90 pages a
month—while continuing work on Bentley's,
HP Pavilion
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writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of
Dicken's better known stories, with dialogue that transferred well to the stage
(most likely because he was writing stage plays at the same time) and more
importantly, it was the first Victorian with a child protagonist.[34] HP Pavilion
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On 2 April 1836, after a one year engagement during which he wrote The Pickwick Papers, he
marriedCatherine Thomson Hogarth (1816–1879),
the daughter of George Hogarth,
editor of the Evening
Chronicle.[35] After
a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent,
they returned to lodgings at Furnival's
Inn.[36] HP Pavilion
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The first of ten
children, Charley, was born in January 1837, and a few months later the family
set uphome in Bloomsbury at 48
Doughty Street, London, (on which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year)
from 25 March 1837 until December 1839.[35][37] HP Pavilion
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Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17-year-old sister
Mary moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in
his arms after a brief illness in 1837. Dickens idealised her and is thought to
have drawn on memories of her for his later descriptions of Rose Maylie, Little Nell and Florence
Dombey.[38] HP Pavilion
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His grief was so great that he was unable to make the deadline for
the June instalment of Pickwick
Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twistinstalment that
month as well.[34] HP Pavilion
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At the same time, his success as a novelist continued, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots
of 'Eighty as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41)—all published in
monthly instalments before being made into books.[39] HP Pavilion
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First visit to the United States
In 1842, Dickens and his wife made their first trip to the United
States and Canada. At this time Georgina
Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living
at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone,
to care for the young family they had left behind.[40] She remained with them as housekeeper,
organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870.[41] HP Pavilion
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He described his impressions in a travelogue, American Notes for General
Circulation. Some of the episodes in Martin
Chuzzlewit(1843–44) also drew on these first-hand experiences. Dickens
includes in Notes a powerful condemnation of slavery,
which he had attacked as early as The
Pickwick Papers, HP Pavilion
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correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the
abolition of slavery abroad.[42] During
his visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures and raising
the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in
America.[43][44] HP Pavilion
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He persuaded twenty five writers, headed by Washington Irving to sign a petition for him to take to
congress, but the press were generally hostile to this saying that he should be
grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his
work being pirated.[45] HP Pavilion
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In the early 1840s Dickens showed an interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he
never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism.[46] Soon after his return to England,
Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, written in
1843, HP Pavilion
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which was followed by The
Chimes in 1844 and The Cricket on the Hearth in 1845. Of these A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping in to an
old tradition, did much promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas
in Britain and America.[47] HP Pavilion
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The seeds for the story were planted in Dickens's mind during a
trip to Manchester to witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there.
This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged
School, caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow"
for the poor. HP Pavilion
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As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in
earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote that as the tale
unfolded he "wept and laughed, and wept again" as he "walked
about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all
sober folks had gone to bed."[48] HP Pavilion
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After living briefly in Italy (1844) Dickens travelled to
Switzerland (1846); it was here he began work on Dombey and Son (1846–48). This and David Copperfield (1849–50) mark a significant artistic
break in Dickens's career as his novels became more serious in theme and more
carefully planned than his early works. HP Pavilion
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In May 1846 Angela
Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens about
setting up a home for the redemption of fallen
women from the working class.
Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing
institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and
proficiency in domestic household chores. HP Pavilion
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After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home,
named "Urania Cottage", in the Lime Grove section of Shepherds Bush, which he was to manage
for ten years,[49] setting
the house rules and reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective
residents.[50] HP Pavilion
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Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the
women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100
women graduated between 1847 and 1859.[51] HP Pavilion
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Middle years
In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1857).[52] It was here he indulged in the amateur
theatricals which are described in Forster's "Life".[53] In 1856, HP Pavilion DV6-1030ef
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his income from writing allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place in Higham,
Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in
it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased
him.[54] HP Pavilion
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In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his
protégé Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell deeply in
love with one of the actresses, Ellen
Ternan, which was to last the rest of his life.[55] Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18 when he
made the decision, which went strongly against Victorian convention, to
separate from his wife, Catherine, HP Pavilion
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in 1858—divorce was still unthinkable for someone as famous as he
was. When Catherine left, never to see her husband again, she took with her one
child, leaving the other children to be raised by her sister Georgina who chose
to stay at Gad's Hill.[41] HP Pavilion
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During this period, whilst pondering about giving public readings
for his own profit, Dickens was approached by Great
Ormond Street Hospital to help it
survive its first major financial crisis through a charitable appeal. HP Pavilion
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His 'Drooping Buds’ essay inHousehold Words earlier in 3 April 1852 was
considered by the hospital’s founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital’s
success.[56] Dickens,
whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's
founder Charles West, to preside and he threw himself into the task, heart and
soul.[57] HP Pavilion
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Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an
endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing — one of 9
February 1858 alone raised £3,000.[58][59][60] HP Pavilion
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After separating from Catherine,[61] Dickens undertook a series of hugely
popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism,
were to absorb most of his creative energies for the next decade, in which he
was to write only two more novels.[62] HP Pavilion
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His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859,
consisted of 129 appearances in 49 different towns throughout England, Scotland
and Ireland.[63] Dickens's
continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre
scenes in Nicholas Nickleby,
but more importantly he found an outlet in public readings. HP Pavilion
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In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland,
with more the following year in England and Ireland.
Major works, A
Tale of Two Cities (1859);
and Great Expectations (1861) soon followed and were
resounding successes. During this time he was also the publisher and editor of,
and a major contributor to, the journals Household
Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870).[64] HP Pavilion
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In early September 1860, in a field behind Gad's Hill, Dickens
made a great bonfire of almost his entire correspondence—only those letters on
business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his
letters to her,[65] HP Pavilion
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the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative.[66] In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted
that Ternan had unburdened herself with a Canon Benham, and gave currency to
rumours they had been lovers.[67] That
the two had a son who died in infancy was alleged by Dickens's daughter, HP Pavilion
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Kate Perugini, whom Gladys Storey had interviewed before her death
in 1929, and published her account in Dickens
and Daughter,[68][69] although
no contemporary evidence exists. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her a financially
independent woman. HP Pavilion
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Claire Tomalin's book, The
Invisible Woman, argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the
last 13 years of his life. The book was subsequently turned into a play, Little Nell, by Simon Gray.
In the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal, becoming one of the early
members of The Ghost Club.[70] HP Pavilion
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On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The first
seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast
iron bridge under repair. The
only first-class carriage to remain on the track was
the one in which Dickens was travelling. HP Pavilion DV6-1040ez
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Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded
and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water and saved
some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he
returned to his carriage to retrieve it.[71] HP Pavilion
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Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The Signal-Man",
in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail
crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861. HP Pavilion
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Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been
travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal.
Although physically unharmed, Dickens never really recovered from the trauma of
the Staplehurst crash, and his normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinishedThe
Mystery of Edwin Drood. HP Pavilion
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Second visit to the United States
On 9 November 1867, Dickens sailed from Liverpool for his second American reading tour.
Landing at Boston, he devoted the
rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher James Thomas Fields. HP Pavilion
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During his travels, he saw a significant change in the people and
the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the
American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April, when he promised never to
denounce America again. HP Pavilion
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By the end of the tour, the author could hardly manage solid food,
subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April, he boarded his
ship to return to Britain, barely escaping a Federal
Tax Lien against the proceeds of
his lecture tour.[73] HP Pavilion
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Between 1868 and 1869, Dickens gave a series of "farewell
readings" in England, Scotland, and Ireland, beginning on 6 October. He
managed, of a contracted 100 readings, to deliver 75 in the provinces, with a
further 12 in London.[72] HP Pavilion
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As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of
paralysis and collapsed on 22 April 1869, at Preston in Lancashire, and on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled.[74] After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on
his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. HP G62-a30SP
Keyboard
It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company,
Dickens visited opium dens in Shadwell, where he witnessed an elderly addict known as
"Laskar Sal", who formed the model for the "Opium Sal"
subsequently featured in his mystery novel, Edwin
Drood.[75] HP G62-a30SS
Keyboard
When he had regained sufficient strength, Dickens arranged, with
medical approval, for a final series of readings at least partially to make up
to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were to be 12
performances, running between 11 January and 15 March 1870, HP Pavilion
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he last taking place at 8:00 pm at St. James's Hall in London. Although in grave health by
this time, he read A Christmas
Carol and The Trial from Pickwick. On
2 May, he made his last public appearance at a Royal Academy Banquet in the presence of the Prince and Princess
of Wales, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise.[76] HP G62-a30ST
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Death
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home,
after a full day's work on Edwin
Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day, on 9 June,
five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gad's Hill
Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester
Cathedral "in an
inexpensive, HP G62-a30SY
Keyboard
unostentatious, and strictly private manner,"[79] he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster
Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To
the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his
residence, Higham, near Rochester, HP G62-a31EE
Keyboard
Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with
the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's
greatest writers is lost to the world."[80] His last words were: "On the
ground", in response to his daughter Georgina's request that he lie down.[81][nb
3] HP G62-a31SO
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On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried
in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn
Stanley delivered a memorial
elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn",
for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest
scenes and the most degraded characters, HP G62-a32EE
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genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent."
Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley
assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one
with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of
literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English
tongue."[82] HP G62-a32SO
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Literary style
Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picaresque novels which he found in abundance on
his father's shelves. According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most
important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of The Arabian Nights.[83] HP G62-a33EE
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His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity.[84] Satire, flourishing in his gift for
caricature is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to Hogarth for his keen practical sense of the
ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of varieties of class
idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre.[85] HP G62-a33EO
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Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his
characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers, and assist
the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an
"allegorical impetus" to the novels' meanings.[84] HP G62-a33SE
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To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to
"murder" and stony coldness.[86] His literary style is also a mixture
of fantasy and realism.
His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the
"Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks
and shares, HP G62-a33SZ
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people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to furniture are just
some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy.
The author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them
with a summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters
and settings were exactly how he envisioned them. He would brief the
illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin
before he wrote them. HP G62-a34EE
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Marcus Stone, illustrator of Our
Mutual Friend, recalled that the author was always "ready to describe
down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and ...
life-history of the creations of his fancy."[87] HP G62-a34SE
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Characters
Dickens's biographer Claire Tomalin regards him as the greatest
creator of character in English fiction after Shakespeare.[88] HP G62-a34SO
Keyboard
Dickensian characters,
especially so because of their typically whimsical names, are amongst the most
memorable in English literature. The likes of Ebenezer
Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss
Havisham, HP G62-a35EP
Keyboard
Charles Darnay, David
Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Daniel Quilp,Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Squeers, Uriah Heep are so well known as to be part and
parcel of British culture, and in some cases have passed into ordinary
language: a scrooge, for
example, is a miser. HP G62-a35ER Keyboard
His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of
their own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella
from the character Mrs Gamp and Pickwickian, Pecksniffian, and
Gradgrind all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such
characters who werequixotic, HP G62-a35ET
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hypocritical, or vapidly factual. Many were drawn from real life:
Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, though she didn't recognize herself in the
portrait,[89] just as
Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical
exuberance':[90] HP G62-a35EW
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Harold Skimpole in Bleak
House, is based on James
Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognized herself in Miss
Mowcher in David Copperfield.[91][92] Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his
meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep.[93] HP G62-a35EZ
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Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological
geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist
not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild
yet extraordinarily revealing remarks."[94]
One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is
London itself. From the coaching
inns on the outskirts of the city
to the lower reaches of the Thames,
all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work. HP G62-a35SO
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Autobiographical elements
Authors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people
they have known in real life. David
Copperfield is regarded as
strongly autobiographical. The scenes in Bleak
House of interminable court
cases and legal arguments reflect Dickens's experiences as law clerk and court
reporter, HP G62-a35SP
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and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural
delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright.[95] Dickens's father was sent to prison
for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, HP G62-a35SS
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with the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorritresulting from
Dickens's own experiences of the institution.[96] Lucy Stroughill, a childhood
sweetheart may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as
Little Em'ly in David
Copperfield and Lucie Manette
in A Tale of Two Cities.[97][nb
4] HP G62-a36SL
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Dickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was
also ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his
realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life
until six years after his death when John Forster published a biography on
which Dickens had collaborated. HP G62-a36SO
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Even figures based on real people can, at the same time, represent
at the same time elements of the writer's own personality. Though Skimpole
brutally sends up Leigh Hunt, some critics have detected in his portrait
features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by
self-parody.[98] HP G62-a37SF
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Episodic writing
Most of Dickens's major novels were first written in monthly or
weekly instalments in journals such as Master
Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, later
reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories cheap, accessible
and the series of regular cliff-hangers made each new episode widely
anticipated. HP G62-a37SO
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When The Old
Curiosity Shop was being
serialized, American fans even waited at the docks in New York, shouting out to
the crew of an incoming ship, "Is little Nell dead?"[99] Part of Dickens's great talent was to
incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel
at the end. HP G62-a38EE
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Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style
resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers and friends. His
friend Forster had a significant hand, reviewing his drafts, that went beyond
matters of punctation. He toned down melodramatic and sensationalist
exaggerations, cut long passages, HP G62-a38EO
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(such as the episode of
Quilp's drowning in The Old
Curiosity Shop), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he
who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in Oliver Twist. Dickens had not
thought of killing Little Nell, and it was Forster who advised him to entertain
this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine.[100] HP G62-a38SE
Keyboard
Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce
critic of the poverty and social
stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he
expressed his belief that, "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches
as she does in purple and fine linen".[101] HP G62-a39EE
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Dickens's second novel, Oliver
Twist (1839), shocked readers
with its images of poverty and crime: it destroyed middle class polemics about
criminals, making any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed
impossible.[102][103] HP G62-a39SE
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Dickens is often described as using 'idealised' characters and
highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals.
The story of Nell Trent in The
Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was
received as extraordinarily moving by contemporary readers but viewed as
ludicrously sentimental byOscar Wilde. HP G62-a40EC
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"You would need to have a heart of stone", he declared
in one of his famous witticisms, "not to laugh at the death of little
Nell."[104] HP G62-a40EE
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G. K. Chesterton, stating that "It is not the death of little
Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", argued that the
maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature
of Dickens's grief, his 'despotic' use of people's feelings to move them to
tears in works like this.[105] HP G62-a40EP
Keyboard
In Oliver Twist Dickens provides readers with an
idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically 'good' that his
values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement
in a gang of young pickpockets.
While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson inBleak
House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), HP G62-a40ER
Keyboard
this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant
social commentary. Many of his novels are concerned with social realism,
focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (for
instance, factory networks in Hard
Times and hypocritical
exclusionary class codes in Our
Mutual Friend). HP G62-a40EV
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Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his
own life, scintillates with coincidences.[106] Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost
nephew of the upper class family that randomly rescues him from the dangers of
the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque
novels, such as Henry Fielding's Tom
Jones that Dickens enjoyed
reading as a youth.[107] HP G62-a40EW
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Reception
Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time,[108] and remains one of the best known and
most read of English authors. His works have never gone out of print,[109] and have been adapted continuously for
the screen since the invention of cinema,[110] HP G62-a40SA
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with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on
Dickens's works documented.[111] Many
of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime and as early as
1913, a silent film of The
Pickwick Paperswas made. HP G62-a40SP
Keyboard
Among fellow writers, Dickens has been both lionized and mocked. Leo Tolstoy, G. K. Chesterton and George
Orwell praised his realism, comic voice, prose fluency,
and genius for satiric caricature, as well as his passionate advocacy on behalf of children and the poor. HP G62-a41EE
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On the other hand, Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction
of character, while admiring his gift for caricature;[112] His late contemporary William Wordsworth, by then Poet laureate, thought him a
"very talkative, vulgar young person", HP G62-a41SF
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adding he had not read a line of his work; Dickens in return
thought Wordsworth "a dreadful Old Ass".[113] Henry James denied him a premier
position, calling him, "the greatest of superficial novelists":
Dickens failed to endow his characters with psychological depth and the novels,
"loose baggy monsters"[114] HP G62-a42EE
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betrayed a "cavalier organisation".[115] Virginia Woolf had a love-hate
relationship with his works, finding his novels "mesmerizing" while
reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style.[116] HP G62-a43EE
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It is likely that A
Christmas Carol stands as his
best-known story, with frequent new adaptations. It is also the most-filmed of
Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early years of cinema.[117] According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of
the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of
the holiday spearheaded by A
Christmas Carol. HP G62-a43SE
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Dickens catalysed the emerging Christmas as a family-centred
festival of generosity, in contrast to the dwindling community-based and
church-centred observations, as new middle-class expectations arose.[118] Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny
Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness. A
prominent phrase from the tale, HP G62-a44EE
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'Merry Christmas', was
popularised following the appearance of the story.[119] The term Scrooge became a synonym for
miser, and his dismissive put-down exclamation 'Bah! Humbug!' likewise gained currency as an idiom.[120] Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national
benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness".[117] HP G62-a44SA
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At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power
of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and
disadvantaged within society. HP G62-a44SE
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Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues—such as sanitation and the workhouse—but his fiction probably
demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class
inequalities. He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and
condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such
abuses to exist, HP G62-a45EE
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but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this
condition is in Hard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length
treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses both vitriol
and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed
"Hands" by the factory owners; HP G62-a45SA
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that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages
of the machines that they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular
journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class
oppression. For example, the prison scenes in The
Pickwick Papers are claimed
to have been influential in having the Fleet
Prison shut down. HP G62-a45SE
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Karl Marx asserted
that Dickens ... "issued to the world more political and social
truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists
and moralists put together".[121] George Bernard Shaw even remarked that Great Expectations was more seditious than Marx's own Das Kapital.[121] HP G62-a45SF
Keyboard
The exceptional popularity of his novels, even those with socially
oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend, 1865)
underscored not only his almost preternatural ability to create compelling
storylines and unforgettable characters, HP G62-a45SS
Keyboard
but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of
social justice that had commonly been ignored. It has been argued that his
technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material'
that, in the gradual dénouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the
organisation of Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species.[122] HP G62-a46EE
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His fiction, with often vivid descriptions of life in 19th-century
England, has inaccurately and anachronistically come to symbolise on a global
level Victorian society (1837 – 1901) as uniformly "Dickensian",
when in fact, his novels' time scope spanned from the 1770s to the 1860s. HP G62-a46SE
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In the decade following his death in 1870, a more intense degree
of socially and philosophically pessimistic perspectives invested British
fiction; such themes stood in marked contrast to the religious faith that
ultimately held together even the bleakest of Dickens's novels. HP G62-a48SS
Keyboard
Dickens clearly influenced later Victorian novelists such as Thomas Hardyand George Gissing; their works display a
greater willingness to confront and challenge the Victorian institution of
religion. They also portray characters caught up by social forces (primarily
via lower-class conditions), but they usually steered them to tragic ends
beyond their control. HP G62-a49SS
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Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist
in many places with which Dickens was associated, such as the Charles Dickens
Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth,
the house in which he was born. The original manuscripts of many of his novels,
as well as printers' proofs, HP G62-a50EC
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first editions, and illustrations from the collection of Dickens's
friend John Forster are held at the Victoria
and Albert Museum.[123] Dickens's
will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour. The only life-size
bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis
Edwin Elwell, can be found in Clark
Park in the Spruce Hillneighbourhood of Philadelphia. HP G62-a50ER
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Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England that was in circulation in the UK
between 1992 and 2003. His
portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from The Pickwick Papers. A theme
park, Dickens World, HP G62-a50ET
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standing in part on the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father once worked in
the Navy Pay Office, opened in Chatham in 2007, HP G62-a50SF
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and to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles
Dickens in 2012, the Museum of
London will the UK's first major
exhibition on the author in 40 years.[124]In the UK survey entitled The Big Read carried out by the BBC in
2003, five of Dickens's books were named in the Top 100.[125] HP G62-a50EV
Keyboard
Criminal life
Ikey Solomon first had a shop in Brighton, but later opened what
was ostensibly a jeweller's shop in Bell Lane, London, in the vicinity
of Petticoat Lane.[4](This business has also been described as
a pawn shop.) HP G62-a50SG
Keyboard
Solomon used the shop to carry on business as a receiver of stolen
goods, known as a fence, becoming one of the most active Londoners in the
"trade". HP G62-a50SG
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On 17 April 1810 Solomon, along with a man named Joel Joseph, were
caught stealing a pocket book (valued at 4 shillings) and £40 in bank notes
from one Mr. Thomas Dodd outside Westminster Hall (the site of
Parliament) where a large crowd had gathered for a public meeting. HP G62-a50SM
Keyboard
Police chased the pair and caught them inside the Hall. Joseph
attempted to get rid of the evidence by eating the bank notes, while Solomon
tried to ditch the notebook. HP G62-a50SQ
Keyboard
Both were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey during
the June Sessions 1810 and found guilty of stealing, a felony.[5] SHP G62-a50SS
Keyboard
olomon, just 23 at the time, was sentenced to penal
transportation, to spend the rest of his days in Australia. However, for
reasons that are no longer clear, he remained in England, imprisoned in
the prison hulk "Zetland" for four years, before being
released in error or escaping.[1] HP G62-a50ST
Keyboard
Solomon returned to London in about 1818 and set up as a fence and
pawn broker. He continued until being arrested again on 25 April 1827, when
police charged Solomon with theft and receiving. The goods involved were 6
watches, 3½ yards of woollen cloth, HP G62-a52ES
Keyboard
17 shawls, 12 pieces of Valentia cloth, lace, bobbinet, caps and
other articles. Solomon was committed for trial and lodged in Newgate
Prison.[1] HP G62-a52SG
Keyboard
Solomon gained substantial notoriety with this arrest. Pamphlet
publishers created three highly-exaggerated accounts of his criminal activity,
which sold very well. HP G62-a52SR
Keyboard
On a writ of habeas corpus, jailers took Solomon to the Court
of King's Bench. The application failed and the guards led him to a
hackney coach for the return to Newgate. Unknown to his captors, the coach was
driven by Solomon's father-in-law. The turnkeys approved a detour
through Petticoat Lane. At a prearranged place, some of Solomon's friends
overpowered the guards and released Ikey.[1]
HP G62-a53EE
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Solomon fled
England, going first to Denmark and then to the United States,[1] arriving
in New York in August 1827.[6]
Ikey's escape from custody was prominent news throughout England.
Police quickly focused on Ikey's family. HP G62-a53SE
Keyboard
Officers arrested Solomon's wife, Ann, and charged her with
receiving stolen goods. She was found guilty and sentenced to penal
transportation to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's
Land). HP G62-a53SG
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The judge allowed Solomon's four youngest children (all under the
age of ten) to accompany Ann on the transport ship. Their two oldest sons,
John, 20, and Moses, 19, sailed to Sydney and then to Tasmania independently in
order to be with their mother. HP G62-a54SG
Keyboard
Ikey's father was also charged with theft, but the court allowed
his sentence to be respited because of his age. (Henry claimed, "I am
upwards of seventy years old". The Old Bailey records him as
being 69). HP G62-a54SR
Keyboard
Ann traveled in the ship Mermaid, arriving
at Hobart Town Penal Colony in June 1828. Back in New York, Ikey
Solomon learned from newspapers that his wife had been transported. He decided
he would sail to Tasmania in order to be with her. Solomon first went
to Rio de Janeiro, HP G62-a55ER
Keyboard
then sailed in
the Coronet to Hobart. He traveled under the name of
Slowman, probably a mispronunciation of Soloman rather than an assumed name.
Hobart, Tasmania's capital, was the enforced home of many of
Solomon's old criminal colleagues and customers. These individuals quickly
recognised Ikey when he arrived on 6 October 1828. HP G62-a55SF
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Solomon's London escape had made him a notorious fugitive, but he
had not broken any laws in Tasmania. As a result, Tasmanian
Lieutenant-Governor Colonel George Arthur could not arrest Solomon
without a warrant from London. On 17 October 1828 he wrote to the Colonial
Office requesting one. HP G62-a55SG
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This warrant took 12 months to reach Tasmania. In the meantime,
Solomon opened a tobacco shop/general store in Hobart's Elizabeth Street. He
also began petitioning to have his wife assigned to his household. HP G62-a55ST
Keyboard
Ann Solomon had initially been assigned as a servant to police
officer Richard Newman, but quarrels broke out and she was sent to the
Tasmania's Female House of Correction. HP G62-a56SG
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Ikey made a number of requests that Ann be assigned to him.
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur finally agreed to the assignment after Ikey entered
into a £1000 bond to guarantee that his wife would not escape from the colony,
and a number of local publicans and merchants, including John Pascoe
Fawkner, entered into sureties of £100 or £200 each. HP G62-a57SF
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Arrest and return to England
The warrants for Ikey Solomon's arrest finally arrived in November
1829 aboard the Lady of the Lake. Hobart authorities immediately
arrested Solomon. HP G62-a57SG
Keyboard
Solomon's counsel, however, had him brought before the court on a
writ of habeas corpus. The judge approved Solomon's release because of a
technical fault in the London warrants, but fixed bail at £2000, with four
sureties of £500. HP G62-a58SF
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Solomon's friends found it difficult to raise so much money.
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur finally issued a warrant in his own name against
Solomon. Police arrested Ikey and placed him on board the ship Prince Regent to
be sent back to England. HP G62-a58SG
Keyboard
Sydney and Hobart newspapers denounced the governor's refusal to
abide by the principles of habeas corpus. Thomas Capon, the chief constable,
had to accompany Ikey on the voyage because the ship's master refused to
guarantee Solomon's safe arrival. HP G62-a59EG
Keyboard
Ikey's trial at the Old Bailey in June 1830 caused a sensation and
was extensively reported in the newspapers and the pamphlets of the day. As
there are strong similarities between his trial and Fagin's trial in Oliver
Twist (Ch 52) it is highly likely that Dickens used it as the basis
for Fagin's trial. HP G62-a60EC
Keyboard
Solomon was tried at the Old Bailey on eight charges of receiving
stolen goods, found guilty on two, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen
years.[1][7][8][9][10] The Judge referred to Solomon as being
"evil-disposed", another indication of the large notoriety he had
garnered. HP G62-a60EM
Keyboard
Solomon was sent back to Hobart in the William Glen
Anderson, arriving in November 1831. He was sent
to Richmond gaol, where in 1832 he became a "javelin man",
or convict constable. In 1834 he was transferred to Port Arthur Convict
Settlement. In 1835, authorities granted Solomon a ticket of leave on
condition that he lived at least 20 miles (32 km) from Hobart.[1] HP G62-a60ER
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Family breakup
When Ikey was released from prison he took up residence at New
Norfolk and tried to reunite with his family, although the two elder sons seem
to have left Van Diemen's Land by that time. HP G62-a60ET
Keyboard
Solomon had become estranged from his wife and children and there
were violent quarrels. Most of the children took their mother's part. Some
sources say that Ikey turned the children out of his house,[1] while
others say that the children turned out their father. HP G62-a60EV
Keyboard
Ann Solomon was returned to the Female House of Correction as a
result of some of these altercations. Her daughter Ann had to write numerous petitions
before her mother was released in September 1835. HP G62-a60SA
Keyboard
Ikey and Ann lived
apart for the remainder of their lives. The elder Ann Solomon was granted a ticket-of-leave
in November 1835 and a conditional pardon in May 1840.
Ikey remained in New Norfolk till 1838. He was living at New Town
in 1840 when he was granted a conditional pardon. He received
his certificate of freedom in 1844.[1] HP G62-a60SP
Keyboard
Solomon died on 3 September 1850, and was buried the next day in
the Jewish cemetery in Harrington Street, Hobart. His estate was worth no
more than £70. HP G62-a60SQ
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What remained of the little Jewish Cemetery in Harrington Street,
(possibly the oldest Jewish Cemetery in Australia) was bulldozed in 2002. It
had been officially closed in 1872 and, following the site becoming property of
the state in 1945, what memorials remained were removed as an apartment complex
was built on the site over the next decade.[11] HP G62-a61SG
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Solomon remains famous as the person upon whom Charles
Dickens may have based the character of Fagin in the novel Oliver
Twist. HP G62-a62SG
Keyboard
Solomon's life has
been the subject of several works, including:
Solomon was Jewish. His literary and historical treatment have
been the focus of many debates. Some argue that many portrayals of Ikey Solomon
have been anti-Semitic. Bryce Courtenay's Ikey character in The
Potato Factory has recently been the subject of such debate.[2][6] The
Fagin character, with its connection to Ikey, has caused similar debate. HP G62-a63SG
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