Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA (7 February
1812 9 June
1870), pen-name
"Boz",
was an English
novelist.
During his career Dickens achieved massive worldwide popularity,
winning acclaim for his rich storytelling and memorable characters.
Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was
the foremost novelist of the Victorian era
as well as a vigorous social campaigner.
Later critics, beginning with George Gissing
and G. K. Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose,
his endless invention of memorable characters and his powerful social
sensibilities. Yet he also received criticism from his more rarefied
readers, including George Henry Lewes, Henry James,
and Virginia Woolf,
who list faults such as sentimentality, unrealistic events and grotesque
characters.[1]
The popularity of his novels and short stories during his
lifetime and to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none
have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels,
which was the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new
part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading
public. He is regarded by many as the greatest writer of his time.
Life
Charles Dickens was born in Landport,
near Portsmouth,
Hampshire,
the second child to John Dickens (17861851),
a naval pay clerk, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens nιe Barrow (17891863) on February 7, 1812.
When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent.
When he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town
in London.
Although his early years were an idyllic time, he thought
himself then as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of
boy"[2].
He spent his time outdoors, reading voraciously with a particular
fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett
and Henry Fielding. He talked later in life of his
extremely poignant memories of childhood and his continuing photographic memory of people and events that
helped bring his fiction to life. His family was moderately well-off,
and he received some education at the private William Giles' school
in Chatham but all that changed
when his father, after spending too much money entertaining and
retaining his social position, was imprisoned for debt at Marshalsea.
At the age of twelve, Dickens was deemed old enough to work
and began working for ten 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 in Camden Town
and help to support his family, most of whom were living with his
father, who was incarcerated in the nearby Marshalsea debtors' prison.
After a few months his family was able to leave Marshalsea
but their financial situation only improved some time later, partly
due to money inherited from his father's family. His mother did
not immediately remove Charles from the boot-blacking factory, which
was owned by a relation of hers. Dickens never forgave his mother
for this, and resentment of his situation and the conditions under
which working-class people lived became major themes of his works.
As Dickens wrote in David Copperfield, judged to be his most
clearly autobiographical novel, "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!" Eventually he attended the Wellington
House Academy
in North London.
In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and
Blackmore as a law clerk, a junior office position with potential
to become a lawyer, a profession for which he later showed his dislike
in his many literary works. He later became a court stenographer
at the age of 17.
In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, who
is said to be the model for Dora in David Copperfield.
Their courtship met with diapproval by her parents and was effectively
ended when she was sent to school in Paris.
In 1834, Dickens became a journalist, reporting parliamentary
debate and travelling Britain
by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle.
His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals
from 1933, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by
Boz which were published in 1836 and led to his first
novel, The Pickwick Papers being serialised from
March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals for
much of his life.
On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth (18161879), the daughter of George
Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle.
After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, they set up home in
Bloomsbury where they produced
ten children.
In the same year, he accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position he would
hold until 1839 when he fell out with the owner. However, his success
as a novelist continued, producing Oliver Twist
(1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), then The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge
as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840-41),
all being published in monthly installments before being made into
books.
In 1842, he travelled together with his wife to the United States
which was successful despite his support for the abolition of slavery;
the trip is described in the short travelogue
American Notes
for General Circulation and is also the basis of
some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Shortly thereafter, he
began to show interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he remained an
Anglican,
at least nominally, for the rest of his life. [1]
Dickens's writings continued to be popular, especially A Christmas
Carol in 1843, the first of his Christmas books, which
was reputedly written in a matter of weeks.
After living briefly abroad, in Italy (1844) and Switzerland
(1846), Dickens continued his success with Dombey and Son
(1848); David Copperfield (1849-50); Bleak House
(1852-53); Hard Times
(1854); Little Dorrit (1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and Great Expectations (1861). Dickens was also a
major contributor for the journals, Household Words
(185059) and All the Year Round (185870).
In 1856, his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This large
house in Higham, Kent, was very special to the author 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.
When Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, divorce was
almost unthinkable, particularly for someone as famous as he was,
and so 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, although 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 had Georgina move in to help her, but
there were rumours that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law,
possibly fueled by the fact that she remained at Gadshill to look
after the younger children when Catherine left. 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 seemed to have fallen short of Dickens's romantic memory
of her.
On 9 June 1865,
while returning from France to see the actress Ellen Ternan,
Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the first
seven 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 in which Dickens was berthed. Dickens spent some time tending
the wounded and the 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. Typical of Dickens, he later used the terrible
experience to write his short ghost story The Signal-Man
in which the protagonist has a premonition of a rail crash.
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 had been Dickens's 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 likely mistress, until his death. The dimensions of the affair
were unknown until the publication of Dickens and Daughter,
a book about Dickens's relationship with his daughter Kate, in 1939.
Kate Dickens worked with author Gladys Storey on the book prior
to her death in 1929, and alleged that Dickens and Ternan had a
son who died in infancy, though no contemporary evidence exists.
Dickens Statue in Philadelphia
Dickens, though unharmed, never really recovered from the
Staplehurst crash, and 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.
Dickens was fascinated by the theatre as an escape from the world,
and theatres and theatrical people appear in Nicholas Nickleby.
The travelling shows were extremely popular and, after three tours
of British Isles, Dickens gave his first public reading
in the United States at a New York City
theatre on 2 December
1867.
The effort and passion he put into these readings with individual
character voices is also thought to have contributed to his death.
When he undertook another English tour of readings (186970), he
became ill and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash,
on 9 June
1870, he died at home at
Gad's Hill Place
after suffering a stroke.
Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral,
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." Dickens's will stipulated that
no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze
statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park, Philadelphia, in the United States.
Literary style
Dickens's 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 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.
Characters
Charles Dickens used his rich imagination,
sense of humour and detailed memories, particularly of his childhood,
to enliven his fiction.
The characters are among the most memorable in English literature;
certainly their names are. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge,
Fagin,
Mrs Gamp, Charles Darnay, Oliver Twist,
Micawber,
Pecksniff, Miss Havisham, Wackford Squeers and many others
are so well known and can be believed to be living a life outside
the novels that their stories have been continued by other authors.
Dickens loved the style of 18th Century gothic romance, though it had already become a
bit of a joke Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey
being a well known parody and while some are grotesques, their
eccentricities do not usually overshadow the stories. One 'character'
most 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 by someone who truly loved
London and spent many hours walking its streets.
Social commentary
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. Throughout his works, Dickens retained an
empathy for the common man and a scepticism for the fine folk. Dickens's
second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), was responsible for the
clearing of the actual London slum
that was the basis of the story's Jacob's Island. In addition, with the character
of the tragic prostitute, Nancy,
Dickens "humanised" such women for the reading public;
women who were regarded as "unfortunates," inherently
immoral casualties of the Victorian class/economic system. Bleak House
and Little Dorrit elaborated expansive critiques
of the Victorian institutional apparatus: the interminable lawsuits
of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak
House and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient,
corrupt patent offices and unregulated market speculation.
Bibliography
Major
novels