. Signature Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today. Born in, Dickens left school to work in a factory when was incarcerated in a.
Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five, 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. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.
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Endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre.
And are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from to, and —for his, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations,. On the other hand, and complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters. Illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been sent to the, published in the 1892 edition of Forster's Life of Dickens This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at, and the family (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term of work) moved to in London.
The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts, and, living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the in, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town.
Roylance was 'a reduced impoverished old lady, long known to our family', 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, Archibald Russell, 'a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman. With a quiet old wife' and lame son, in in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in. On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the —he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens later used the prison as a setting in.
To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present, where he earned six a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, 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'. As he recalled to (from The Life of Charles Dickens): 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, 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. 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.
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. 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.
When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district of the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street and little audiences gathered and watched them at work—in Dickens biographer 's estimation, the public display was 'a new refinement added to his misery'. The around 1897, after it had closed A few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs Roylance.
Charles's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, did not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking warehouse. This influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the family, and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home: '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. Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most,: 'I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!'
Dickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy in, where he remained until March 1827, having spent about two years there. He did not consider it to be 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.'
Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, as a junior from May 1827 to November 1828. He was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers, and clerks. He went to theatres obsessively—he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every single day. His favourite actor was, and Dickens learnt his monopolylogues, (farces in which Mathews played every character), by heart.
Then, having learned system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as, 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'. 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. Journalism and early novels In 1832, at age 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident. He enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted fame. Drawn to the theatre—he became an early member of the — he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the manager and the actor were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to imitate the comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the audition because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he had set out on his career as a writer.
In 1833, he submitted his first story, 'A Dinner at Poplar Walk', to the London periodical. William Barrow, a brother of his mother, offered him a job on The Mirror of Parliament and he worked in the for the first time early in 1832. He rented rooms at and worked as a political journalist, reporting on debates, and he travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces, published in 1836: —Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years.
Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's. When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, 'Moses' became 'Boses'—later shortened to Boz. Dickens's own name was considered 'queer' by a contemporary critic, who wrote in 1849: 'Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations.'
He contributed to and edited journals throughout his literary career. In January 1835, the Morning Chronicle launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the Chronicle 's music critic,. Hogarth invited Dickens to contribute Street Sketches and Dickens became a regular visitor to his Fulham house, excited by Hogarth's friendship with a hero of his, and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters—Georgina, Mary, and nineteen-year-old Catherine. Catherine Hogarth Dickens by (1838) Dickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began a friendship with, the author of the highwayman novel (1834), whose bachelor salon in had become the meeting place for a set that included,. All these became his friends and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at the house. The success of Sketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishers for Dickens to supply text to match 's engraved illustrations in a monthly.
Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment, and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired ' to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for the story. The resulting story became, and though the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the Cockney character in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity. The final instalment sold 40,000 copies. In November 1836, Dickens accepted the position of editor of, a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836 as he finished the last instalments of The Pickwick Papers, he began writing the beginning instalments of —writing as many as 90 pages a month—while continuing work on Bentley's and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw.
Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories, and was the first Victorian novel with a child. Young Charles Dickens by, 1839 On 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and three of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens married (1816–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the. They were married in St. Luke's Church, London. After a brief honeymoon in in Kent, the couple returned to lodgings at.
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The first of their, Charley, was born in January 1837, and a few months later the family set up at 48 Doughty Street, London, (on which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickens's younger brother 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. Unusually for Dickens, as a consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Kate stayed at a little farm on for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary—the character he fashioned after her, he found he could not now kill, as he had planned, in his fiction, and, according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of her for his later descriptions of and Florence Dombey.
His grief was so great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that month as well. The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens and John Forster to develop and Forster soon became his unofficial business manager, and the first to read his work. Sketch of Dickens in 1842 during his first American tour. Sketch of Dickens's sister Fanny, bottom left He described his impressions in a,. Dickens includes in Notes a powerful condemnation of slavery, which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters.
In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his trip to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies in Dickens's views on racial inequality, for instance, he has been criticized for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor harsh crackdown during the 1860s in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it. From, Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward to St.
Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire to see an American prairie before returning east. A group of 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Looking Glass Prairie, a trip 30 miles into. During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raising and the pirating of his work in America. He persuaded a group of twenty-five writers, headed by, 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. The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he 'found himself a cultural commodity, and its circulation had passed out his control', causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of public and personal personas in the next novels.
She writes that he assumed a role of 'influential commentator', publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books. His trip to the U.S. Ended with a trip to Canada: Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal where he appeared on stage in light comedies. Dickens portrait by, 1843.
Painted during the period when he was writing A Christmas Carol, it was in the ' 1844 summer exhibition. After viewing it there, said that it showed Dickens with 'the dust and mud of humanity about him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes'. Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, written in 1843, which was followed by in 1844 and in 1845.
Of these, A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping into an old tradition, did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane, caused Dickens to resolve to 'strike a sledge hammer blow' for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He later 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.' After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work on (1846–48). This and (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.
At about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother, worked (John Chapman & Co.). It had been carried out by, a clerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who had acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Powell was also an author and poet and knew many of the famous writers of the day.
After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book called The Living Authors of England with a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey ( ) on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to, editor of the New York literary magazine, saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the, and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications, and Clark was arrested. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted John Chapman & Co.
To seek written confirmation of Powell's guilt. Dickens did receive a reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but once the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing to the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell out of court. Portrait of Charles Dickens c.1850, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up a home for the redemption of of 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. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named 'Urania Cottage', in the Lime Grove section of, which he managed for ten years, setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents. 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.
Religious views As a young man Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organized religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titled Sunday Under Three Heads, he defended the people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. 'Look into your churches- diminished congregations and scanty attendance.
People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven. They display their feeling by staying away from church. Turn into the streets on a Sunday and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over everything around.'
Dickens honoured the figure of Christ—though some claim he may have denied his divinity. Notwithstanding, Dickens has been characterized as a professing Christian.
His son, described Dickens as someone who 'possessed deep religious convictions'. In the early 1840s, Dickens had shown an interest in, and remarked that “Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian.” Writer Gary Colledge, however, asserted that he 'never strayed from his attachment to popular lay '. He also wrote a religious work called (1846), which was a short book about the life of, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family. Dickens disapproved of and 19th-century, seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846. And referred to Dickens as 'that great Christian writer'.
Middle years. 1858 In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play, written by him and his,. Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses, and this passion was to last the rest of his life. Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18 when he made the decision, which went strongly against Victorian convention, to separate from his wife, Catherine, 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. During this period, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal by, to help it survive its first major financial crisis. His 'Drooping Buds' essay in earlier on 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founder, to preside over the appeal, and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing—one reading on 9 February 1858 alone raised £3,000. After separating from Catherine, 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.
His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 different towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. 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.
In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more the following year in England and Ireland. Dickens at his desk, 1858 Major works soon followed, including (1859) and (1861), which were resounding successes. During this time he was also the publisher, editor, and a major contributor to the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and (1858–1870).
In early September 1860, in a field behind Gad's Hill, Dickens made a bonfire of most of his correspondence—only those letters on business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself to a Canon Benham, and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. That the two had a son who died in infancy was alleged by Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, whom Gladys Storey had interviewed before her death in 1929.
Storey published her account in Dickens and Daughter, but no contemporary evidence exists. On his death, Dickens settled an on Ternan which made her a financially independent woman. '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,. In the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in the, becoming one of the early members of. In June 1862, he was offered £10,000 for a reading tour of Australia.
He was enthusiastic, and even planned a travel book, The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down, but ultimately decided against the tour. Two of his sons, and, migrated to Australia, Edward becoming a member of the as between 1889 and 1894. After the On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was involved in the. The train's first seven carriages plunged off a bridge that was under repair. The only carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. 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, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens later used this experience as material for his short, ', in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash.
He also based the story on several previous, such as the of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal. Second visit to the United States. Crowd of spectators buying tickets for a Dickens reading at, New York City in 1867 While he contemplated a second visit to the United States, the outbreak of the in America in 1861 delayed his plans. On 9 November 1867, over two years after the war, Dickens set sail from for his second American reading tour.
Landing at, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as, and his American publisher,. In early December, the readings began.
He performed 76 readings, netting £19,000, from December 1867 to April 1868. Dickens shuttled between Boston and New York, where he gave 22 readings at. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the 'true American ', he kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in.
Poster promoting a reading by Dickens in dated 4 February 1869, two months before he suffered a mild stroke During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the end of the tour Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry.
On 23 April he boarded the liner to return to Britain, barely escaping a against the proceeds of his lecture tour. Farewell readings 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. As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis. He suffered a stroke on 18 April 1869 in Chester.
He collapsed on 22 April 1869, at in Lancashire, and on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled. After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel,. It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company, Dickens visited in, where he witnessed an elderly addict known as ' Sal', who formed the model for the 'Opium Sal' subsequently featured in his mystery novel, Edwin Drood. After Dickens had regained sufficient strength, he arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings to partially 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, the last at 8:00 pm at 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 Banquet in the presence of the and, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, the illustrator Daniel Maclise. Death certificate of Charles Dickens. 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, five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gads Hill Place. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he suffered the stroke, and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gad's Hill so the public would not know the truth about their relationship.
Contrary to his wish to be buried at 'in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner', he was laid to rest in the of. 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, 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. His last words were: 'On the ground', in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean 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, 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.' In his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his £80,000 estate to his longtime colleague John Forster and his 'best and truest friend' Georgina Hogarth who, along with Dickens's two sons, also received a tax-free sum of £8,000 (about £800,000 in present terms). Although Dickens and his wife had been separated for several years at the time of his death, he provided her with an annual income of £600 and made her similar allowances in his will. He also bequeathed £19 19s to each servant in his employment at the time of his death. Literary style Dickens favoured the style of the 18th-century that 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. Dickens's Dream by, portraying Dickens at his desk at surrounded by many of his characters His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to 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.
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. To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to 'murder' and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the 'Noble Refrigerator'—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, 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 briefed the illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them., illustrator of Our Mutual Friend, recalled that the author was always 'ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics,.
Life-history of the creations of his fancy'. Dickens' characters Dickens's biographer regards him as the greatest creator of character in English fiction after. Dickensian are amongst the most memorable in English literature, especially so because of their typically whimsical names. The likes of, and are so well known as to be part and parcel of, and in some cases have passed into ordinary language: a scrooge, for example, is a miser – or someone who dislikes Christmas festivity. 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, and 'Pickwickian', 'Pecksniffian', and 'Gradgrind' all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were, respectively, hypocritical, and vapidly factual. Many were drawn from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, though she didn't recognise herself in the portrait, just as Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical exuberance': Harold Skimpole in Bleak House is based on: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield.
Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep. 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'. One 'character' vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. Dickens described London as a, inspiring the places and people in many of his novels. From the on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the, all aspects of the capital – – are described over the course of his body of work. Autobiographical elements. An original illustration by from the novel David Copperfield, which is widely regarded as Dickens's most autobiographical work Authors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people they have known in real life.
David Copperfield is regarded by many as a veiled autobiography of Dickens. The scenes of interminable court cases and legal arguments in Bleak House reflect Dickens's experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright. Dickens's father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, with the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little Dorrit resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution. 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. 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. 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.
Episodic writing. Advertisement for Great Expectations, serialised in the weekly literary magazine from December 1860 to August 1861 A pioneer of fiction, 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 affordable and accessible, and the series of regular made each new episode widely anticipated. When was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, 'Is little Nell dead?' Dickens's talent was to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. 'Charles Dickens as he appears when reading.' Wood engraving from, 7 December 1867 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 in reviewing his drafts, an influence that went beyond matters of punctuation. He toned down melodramatic and sensationalist exaggerations, cut long passages (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. Dickens's serialisation of his novels was not uncriticised by other authors.
In Scottish author 's novel, there is a comment by Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship: 'See! They were writing up the log,' said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. 'Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels.' Social commentary.
Dickens portrait (top left), in between Shakespeare and Tennyson, on a stained glass window at the, Ottawa, Canada Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time, and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never gone, and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema, with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works documented.
Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime, and as early as 1913, a silent film of The Pickwick Papers was made. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the. Among fellow writers, Dickens has been both lionised and mocked., G. Chesterton, and praised his realism, comic voice, prose fluency, and satiric caricature, as well as his on behalf of children and the poor.
French writer called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels 'stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression.' Dutch painter was inspired by Dickens's novels in several of his paintings like Vincent's Chair and in an 1889 letter to his sister stated that reading Dickens, especially A Christmas Carol, was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide.
Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature. His late contemporary, by then, thought him a 'very talkative, vulgar young person', adding he had not read a line of his work; Dickens in return thought Wordsworth 'a dreadful Old Ass'.
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', betrayed a 'cavalier organisation'. Had a love-hate relationship with his works, finding his novels 'mesmerizing' while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style. Expressed his admiration for the author, 'We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances.
It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!' A Christmas Carol is most probably 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. According to the historian, 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. 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. Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness.
A prominent phrase from the tale, ', was popularised following the appearance of the story. The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, and his dismissive exclamation likewise gained currency as an idiom. Novelist called the book 'a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness'. Dickens' grave in in 2012 Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with which Dickens was associated. These include the in London, the historic home where he wrote, and; and 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, first editions, and illustrations from the collection of Dickens's friend John Forster are held at the.
Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour; nonetheless, a life-size bronze statue of Dickens entitled, cast in 1891 by, stands in in the neighbourhood of, Pennsylvania. Another life-size statue of Dickens is located at, Sydney, Australia. In 2014, a life-size statue was unveiled near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by the author's great-great grandsons, Ian. Dickens was commemorated on the issued by the that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from The Pickwick Papers. Is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, standing in part on the site of the former where Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office, opened in in 2007.
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens in 2012, the held the UK's first major exhibition on the author in 40 years. In 2002, Dickens was number 41 in the 's poll of the.
American literary critic placed Dickens among the. In the UK survey, carried out by the BBC in 2003, five of Dickens's books were named in the. Dickens and his publications have appeared on a number of postage stamps including: UK (1970, 1993, 2011 and 2012), Soviet Union (1962), Antigua, Barbuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Dubai, Fujairah, St Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla, St Helena, St Lucia and Turks and Caicos Islands (1970), St Vincent (1987), Nevis (2007), Gibraltar, Jersey and Pitcairn Islands (2012), Austria (2013), Mozambique (2014). In November 2018 it was reported that a previously lost portrait of a 31-year-old Dickens, by, had been found in, South Africa.
Gillies was an early supporter of and had painted the portrait in late 1843 when Dickens, aged 31, wrote A Christmas Carol. It was exhibited, to acclaim, at the in 1844.
Notable works. Main article: Dickens published well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books. Dickens's novels were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats. Charles Dickensat Wikipedia's. from Wiktionary.
from Wikimedia Commons. from Wikiquote. from Wikisource. from Wikidata about Charles Dickens.
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