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early years were an idyllic time for him. He described himself then
as a “very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of-boy”. He
spent his time in the out-doors, reading voraciously with a particular
fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry
Fielding. He talked in later life of his extremely strong memories
of childhood and his continuing photographic memory of people and
events help bring his fiction to life.
His family was moderately well off and he received some education
at a private school but all that changed when his father, after
spending too much money entertaining and retaining his social position,
was imprisoned for debt. At the age of twelve Charles was deemed
old enough to work and began working for 10 hours a day in Warren’s
boot-blacking factory located near the present Charing Cross railway
station. He spent his time pasting labels on the jars of thick polish
and earned six shillings a week. With this money he had to pay for
his lodging and help support his family who were incarcerated in
the nearby Marshalsea debtors' prison.
After a few years his family’s financial situation improved, partly
due to money inherited from his father's family. His family were
able to leave the Marshalsea but his mother did not immediately
remove him from the boot-blacking factory which was owned by a relation
of hers. Charles never forgave his mother for this and resentment
of his situation and the conditions working-class people lived under
became major themes of his works. Dickens wrote, "No advice,
no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support from anyone
that I can call to mind, so help me God!"
In May 1827 Dickens began work as a law clerk, a junior office position
with potential to become a lawyer. He did not like the law as a
profession and after a short time as a court stenographer he became
a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate and travelling Britain
by stagecoach to cover election campaigns. His journalism informed
his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz and he continued
to contribute to and edit journals for much of his life. In his
early twenties he made a name for himself with his first novel,
The Pickwick Papers.
On April 2, 1836 Charles married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he
was to have ten children. In 1842 they traveled together to the
United States; the trip is described in the short travelogue American
Notes and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dickens’ writings were extremely popular in their day and were read
extensively. His popularity allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place,
in 1856. This large house in Rochester, Kent was very special to
Dickens as he had walked past it as a child and had 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 Dickens.
Later life
Dickens separated from his wife in 1858. In Victorian times divorce
was almost unthinkable particularly for someone as famous as Charles
Dickens and he continued to maintain her in a house for the next
twenty years until she died. Although they were initially happy
together, Catherine did not seem to share quite the same boundless
energy for life which Dickens had. Her job of looking after their
ten children and the pressure of living with and keeping house for
a world famous novelist certainly did not help. Catherine's sister
Georgina moved in to help her but there were rumours that Charles
was romantically linked to his sister-in-law. An indication of his
marital dissatisfaction was when in 1855 he went to meet his first
love Maria Beadnell. Maria was by this time married as well but
she seems to have fallen short of Dickens' romantic memory of her.
On the 9th April, 1865 while returning from France to see Ellen
Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst train crash in which
the first six carriages of the train plunged off of a bridge that
was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the
track was the one Dickens was in. Dickens spent some time tending
the wounded and dying before rescuers arrived; before finally leaving
he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend and
he returned to his carriage to retrieve it.
Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquiry into the crash,
as it would have become known that he was travelling that day with
Ellen Ternan and her mother, which could have caused a scandal.
Ellen, an actress, had been Dickens' companion since the break-up
of his marriage and as he had met her in 1857 she was most likely
the ultimate reason for that break-up. She continued to be his companion,
and probably mistress, until his death.
Although unharmed he never really recovered from the crash, which
is most evident in the fact that his normally prolific writing shrank
to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinished The
Mystery of Edwin Drood. Much of his time was taken up with public
readings from his best-loved novels. The shows were incredibly popular
and on December 2, 1867 Dickens gave his first public reading in
the United States at a New York City theatre. The effort and passion
he put into these readings with individual character voices is also
thought to have contributed to his death.
Exactly five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, on June
9, 1870, he died. He was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster
Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathiser
to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death,
one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world."
In the 1980s the historic Eastgate House in Rochester, Kent was
converted into a Charles Dickens museum, and an annual Dickens Festival
is held in the city. The house in Portsmouth in which Dickens was
born has also been made into a museum.
Novels
Dickens' writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic
touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery — he calls one
character the "Noble Refrigerator" — are wickedly funny.
Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or dinner
party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens' flights of fancy
which sum up situations better than any simple description could.
The characters themselves are amongst some of the most memorable
in English literature. Certainly their names are. The likes of Ebenezer
Scrooge, Fagin, Mrs Gamp, Micawber, Pecksniff, Miss Havisham, Wackford
Squeers and many others are so well known they can easily be believed
to be living a life outside the novels, but their eccentricities
do not overshadow the stories. Some of these characters are grotesques;
he loved the style of 18th century gothic romance, though it had
already become a bit of a joke (see Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey
for a parodic example). One character most vividly drawn throughout
his novels is London itself. From The coaching inns on the out-skirts
of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames all aspects of the
capital are described by someone who truly loved London and spent
many hours walking its streets. See also: List of Dickens characters.
Most of Dickens' major novels were first written in monthly or weekly
instalments in journals such as Household Words and later collected
into the full novels we are familiar with today. These instalments
made the stories cheap and more accessible and the series of cliff-hangers
every month made each new episode more widely anticipated. Part
of Dickens' great talent was to incorporate this episodic writing
style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. The monthly
numbers were illustrated by, amongst others, "Phiz" (a
pseudonym for Hablot Browne).
Among his best-known works are Great Expectations, David Copperfield,
Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and A Christmas Carol. David Copperfield
is argued by some to be his best novel — it is certainly his most
autobiographical. However, Little Dorrit, a masterpiece of acerbic
satire masquerading as a rags-to-riches story, is on a par with
the very best of Jonathan Swift and should not be overlooked.
Dickens' novels were, among other things, works of social commentary.
He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification
of Victorian society. Throughout his works, Dickens retained an
empathy for the common man and a scepticism for the fine folk.
Dickens was fascinated by the theatre as an escape from the world,
and theatres and theatrical people appear in Nicholas Nickleby.
Dickens himself had a flourishing career as a performer, reading
scenes from his works. He travelled widely in Britain and America
on stage tours.
Much of Dickens' writing seems sentimental today, like the death
of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. Even where the leading
characters are sentimental, as in Bleak House, the many other colourful
characters and events, the satire and subplots, reward the reader.
Another criticism of his writing is the unrealistic and unlikeliness
of his plots. This is true but much of the time he was not aiming
for realism but for entertainment and to recapture the picaresque
and gothic novels of his youth. When he did attempt realism his
novels were often unsuccessful and unpopular. The fact that his
own life story of happiness, then poverty, then an unexpected inheritance,
and finally international fame was unlikely shows that unlikely
stories are not necessarily unrealistic.
All authors incorporate autobiographical elements in their fiction,
but with Dickens this is very noticeable, particularly as he took
pains to cover up what he considered his shameful, lowly past. The
scenes from Bleak House of interminable court cases and legal arguments
could only come from a journalist who has had to report them. Dickens'
own family was sent to prison for poverty, a common theme in many
of his books, in particular the Marshalsea in Little Dorrit. Little
Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop is thought to represent Dickens'
sister-in-law, Nicholas Nickleby's father is certainly Dickens'
own father and the snobbish nature of Pip from Great Expectations
is similar to the author himself.
At least 180 movies and TV adaptations have been based on Dickens'
works.
Anti-Semitism
Like
those of several of his contemporaries, some of his works, in today's
context, are perceived as being marred by anti-Semitism. For example,
the character Fagin in Oliver Twist is depicted as a stereotypical
Jew, with passages describing his hooked nose and greedy eyes. Dickens,
it should be remembered, lived in a time which preceded the Holocaust,
and it can be argued that he was writing for dramatic effect: Fagin,
when all is said and done, is a caricature, one of the great pantomime
villains of fiction.
Dickens had few dealings with flesh and blood Jews until 1860 when
he sold his home, Tavistock House, to a Mr. Davis, a Jewish banker.
His journal entries are initially deprecatory; the subsequent conduct
of the banker and the ease with which the transaction was effected
caused him to rethink and revise his whole position in this area.
Dickens' response to the (mild) criticism of Fagin emanating from
the Mrs. Davis (the wife of the self-same banker), writing in the
Jewish Chronicle, is revealing:
"Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately
was true of the time to which the story refers, that that class
of criminal almost invariably was a Jew ... and secondly, that he
is called 'the Jew' not because of his religion but because of his
race."
It should be noted that in an 1867 revision of the text, most of
the Jewish references were excised. Fagin should also be balanced
against the sympathetic portrayal of the Jew Riah in Our Mutual
Friend, his last complete novel. It has been argued by some that
this represents a process of change in Dickens' approach to issues
relating to ethnicity.
Mrs. Davis was pleased with Dickens' creation of a good Jew and
sent him a copy of a new translation of the Hebrew Bible. Dickens
was gratitude personified in his response, asserting:
"There is nothing but good will left between me and a People
for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not wilfully have
given an offence or done an injustice for any worldly consideration.
Believe me, Very faithfully yours, Charles Dickens."
Quotation
"Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
"Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge,
what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have
been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece
of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is
in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or
the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail." —"A
Christmas Carol"
Trivia
The
word boredom first appeared in print in Bleak House.
Since their publishing, not one single Dickens novel has gone out
of print in England.
Works
Major novels
The Pickwick Papers (1836)
Oliver Twist (1837-1839)
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
The Christmas Books:
A Christmas Carol (1843)
The Chimes (1844)
The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
The Battle for Life (1846)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)
Dombey and Son (1846-1848)
David Copperfield (1849-1850)
Bleak House (1852-1853)
Hard Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (July 11, 1859)
Great Expectations (1860-1861)
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished) (1870)
Selected other books
Sketches by Boz (1836)
American Notes (1842)
A Child's History of England (1851-1853)
Short stories
"A Christmas Tree"
"A Message From The Sea"
"Doctor Marigold"
"George Silverman's Explanation"
"Going Into Society"
"Holiday Romance"
"Hunted Down"
"Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy"
"Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings"
"Mugby Junction"
"Perils of Certain English Prisoners"
"Somebody's Luggage"
"Sunday Under Three Heads"
"The Child's Story"
"The Haunted House"
"The Haunted Man And The Ghost's Bargain"
"The Holly-Tree"
"The Lamplighter"
"The Seven Poor Travellers"
"The Trial For Murder"
"Tom Tiddler's Ground"
"What Christmas Is As We Grow Older"
"Wreck Of The Golden Mary"
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