A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens's works are charactericized by attacks on social evils, unjustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens, the chronicler of afflicted children, saw in his own childhood the archetypal experience of the child frustrated by the pressures of an urban and commercialized environment. Dickens's lively good, bad and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers. A man of phenomenal energy, Dickens combined his literary career with a variety of social and theatrical interests. Some of the social concerns are interestingly documented in Philip Collins's two studies, Dickens and Crime (1962) and Dickens and Education (1963), while the theatrical involvement embraced writing, acting and producing for the stage, and culminated in the famous public readings from his own works. Much has been made of the complexity of Dickens's plots but fundamentally a Dickens novel is based on a sample narrative concept like Pickwick's journey, the lives of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, or Pip, or the hidden secrets of Bleak House, Little Dorrit or Our Mutual Friend. On the other hand, with a basic story established, there is ample opportunity for the multiplicity of character and event for which Dickens is famous. Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which created misery for the class of low-paid workers and gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. He worked in a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his family was in Marshalea debtor's prison in 1824. In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk, and then worked as a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. He wrote for "True Son" (1830-32), "Mirror of Parliament" (1832-34) and the "Morning Chronicle" (1834-36). He was in the 1830s a contributor to "Monthly Magazine", and "The Evening Chronicle" and edited "Bentley's Miscellany". In the 1840s Dickens founded "Master Humphrey's Cloak" and edited the "London Daily News". The origins of Dickens's literary career can be traced to his early employment as a journalist. This work took him first to the Law Courts, including the Court of Chancery, and then to Parliament, and his contempt for these institutions, evinced most powerfully in Bleak House but reappearing consistently throughout his work, is based on the first-hand knowledge of them that he gained at the outset of his career. From reporting he moved on to descriptive journalism of a more imaginative kind and from 1834 to 1835 he wrote a series of sketches which appeared first in the "Monthly Magazine" and then in the "Evening Chronicle". Some of these, together with some additional sketches written for the occasion, were collected and published in two illustrated volumes under the title Sketches by Boz in February 1836. These years as a journalist left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious atitbustude towards unjust laws. His sharp ear for conversation helped him reveal characters through their own words. Dickens's married in 1836 the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, Catherine Hogart. However, some people suspected that he was more fond of her sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837. Dickens requested that he be buried next to her when he died and wore Mary's ring all his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens had with Catherine 10 children but they were separated in 1858. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s. The Pickwick Papers were stories about a group of rather odd individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath and elsewhere. Their appearance in the "Evening Chronicle" had already attracted the attention of the publishers Edward Chapman and William Hall who invited Dickens to write a series of similar pieces to accompany a set of illustrations that they intended to bring out on sporting themes. From the start the text became more important than the illustrations and The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was born. The work appeared in monthly numbers, running from April 1836 to November in the following year. Dickens's novels first appeared in monthly instalments, including Oliver Twist (1837-39), which depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickelby (1838-39), a tale of young Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune, and Old curiosity shop (1840-41). Among his later works are David Copperfield (1849-50), where Dickens used his own personal experiences of work in a factory, Bleak House (1852-53), A tale of two cities (1859), set in the years of the French Revolution. Great expectations (1860-61), the story of Pip (Philip Pirrip), was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. The unfinished mystery novel The mystery of Edwin Drood was published in 1870. From the 1840s Dickens spent much time travelling and campaigning against many of the social evils of his time. In addition he gave talks and reading, wrote pamphlets, plays, and letters. In 1844-45 he lived in Italy, Switzerland and Paris. He gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States in 1858-68. From 1860 Dickens lived at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent. He died at Gadshill on June 9, 1870. Although Dickens's career as a novelist received much attention, he produced hundreds of essays and edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. Dickens distinquished himself as an essayis in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. A Visit to Newgate (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. In A Small Star in in the East reveals the working conditions on mills and Mr. Barlow (1869) draws a portrait of a unsensitive tutor. |
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