Charles John Huffam Dickens (/ˈdɪkɪnz/ⓘ; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an Englishnovelist,journalist,short story writer andsocial critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of theVictorian era.[1] 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 widely read today.[2][3]
Born inPortsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his fatherJohn was incarcerated in adebtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performedreadings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned vigorously forchildren's rights, education and other social reforms.
Dickens's literary success began with the 1836serial publication ofThe Pickwick Papers, a publishing phenomenon—thanks largely to the introduction of the characterSam Weller in the fourth episode—that sparkedPickwick merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years, Dickens had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.[4][5]Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.[6] 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] For example, when his wife'schiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher inDavid Copperfield seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.[7] His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.[8] Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay ahalfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.[9]
His 1843 novellaA Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every creative medium.Oliver Twist andGreat Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early VictorianLondon. His 1853 novelBleak House, a satire on the judicial system, helped support a reformist movement that culminated in the1870s legal reform in England.A Tale of Two Cities (1859; set in London and Paris) is regarded as his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.[10] The termDickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters.[11][12]
Charles Dickens's birthplace, 393 Commercial Road,Portsmouth, Hampshire2 Ordnance Terrace (house on the left),Chatham, Kent, Dickens's home from 1817 to 1821
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now 393 Commercial Road),Landport inPortsea Island (Portsmouth),Hampshire, the second of eight children ofElizabeth Dickens (née Barrow; 1789–1863) andJohn Dickens (1785–1851). His father was a clerk in theRoyal Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger in the Royal Navy and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles.[13] Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novelDombey and Son (1848).[13]
In January 1815 John Dickens was called back to London, and the family moved to Norfolk Street,Fitzrovia.[14] When Charles was four they relocated toSheerness and thence toChatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11.[15] His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".[16]
An illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been sent to theMarshalsea, published in the 1892 edition of Forster'sLife of Charles Dickens[24]
This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters atSomerset House and the family (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term at school) moved toCamden Town in London.[25] The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and, living beyond his means,[26] John Dickens was forced by his creditors into theMarshalseadebtors' prison inSouthwark, 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.[27] Mrs 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" inDombey and Son. Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for theInsolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, inLant Street in Southwark.[28] They provided the inspiration for the Garlands inThe Old Curiosity Shop.[29]
On Sundays—with his sisterFrances, free from her studies at theRoyal Academy of Music—he spent the day at the Marshalsea.[30] Dickens later used the prison as a setting inLittle Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren'sBlacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the presentCharing Cross railway station, where he earned sixshillings 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".[31] As he recalled toJohn Forster (fromLife 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.[31]
When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district ofCovent Garden, the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street. Small audiences gathered and watched them at work—in Dickens's biographerSimon Callow's estimation, the public display was "a new refinement added to his misery".[32]
TheMarshalsea around 1897, after it had closed. Dickens based several of his characters on the experience of seeing his father in the debtors' prison, most notablyAmy Dorrit fromLittle Dorrit.
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 theInsolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left the Marshalsea,[33] 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.[34]
Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under whichworking-class 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 mostautobiographical novel,David Copperfield:[35] "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!"[36]
Dickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy inCamden Town, 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 inDavid Copperfield."[36]
Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court,Gray's Inn, as a juniorclerk from May 1827 to November 1828. He was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and clerks. Captivated with London's theatre scene, he went to theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every day.[37] His favourite actor wasCharles Mathews and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues" (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart.[38] Then, having learnedThomas Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter atDoctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.[39][40]
In 1830 Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora inDavid Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.[41]
Career
Journalism and writing
Catherine Hogarth Dickens bySamuel Laurence (1838). She met the author in 1834, and they became engaged the following year before marrying in April 1836.
In 1832, at the age of 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident.[42] 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 theGarrick Club[43]—he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the managerGeorge Bartley and the actorCharles Kemble 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.[44]
In 1833 Dickens submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", to the London periodicalMonthly Magazine.[45] His uncle William Barrow offered him a job onThe Mirror of Parliament and he worked in theHouse of Commons for the first time early in 1832. He rented rooms atFurnival's Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting onParliamentary debates, and he travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for theMorning Chronicle.[46]
Frontispiece,Sketches by Boz—Boz being a family nickname—written by Dickens with illustrations byGeorge Cruikshank, 1837
His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces, published in 1836:Sketches by Boz—Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years.[47][48] Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brotherAugustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith'sThe Vicar of Wakefield. When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, "Moses" became "Boses"—later shortened toBoz.[48][49] 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." Dickens contributed to and edited journals throughout his literary career.[45] In January 1835, theMorning Chronicle launched an evening edition, under the editorship of theChronicle's music critic,George Hogarth. Hogarth invited him to contributeStreet Sketches and Dickens became a regular visitor to his Fulham house—excited by Hogarth's friendship withWalter Scott (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and 19-year-old Catherine.[50]
The wise-cracking, warm-hearted servantSam Weller fromThe Pickwick Papers—a publishing phenomenon that sparked numerous spin-offs andPickwick merchandise—made the 24-year-old Dickens famous.[51]
Dickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began a friendship withWilliam Harrison Ainsworth, the author of the highwayman novelRookwood (1834), whose bachelor salon inHarrow Road had become the meeting place for a set that includedDaniel Maclise,Benjamin Disraeli,Edward Bulwer-Lytton andGeorge Cruikshank. All these became his friends and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at the house.[52] The success ofSketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishersChapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to matchRobert Seymour's engraved illustrations in a monthlyletterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired "Phiz" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for the story. The resulting story becameThe Pickwick Papers and, although the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the Cockney characterSam Weller in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity.[53] The final instalment sold 40,000 copies.[45] On the impact of the character,The Paris Review stated in 2015, "arguably the most historic bump in English publishing is the Sam Weller Bump."[51] A publishing phenomenon,John Sutherland, Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, calledThe Pickwick Papers "[t]he most important single novel of the Victorian era".[54] The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-offs and merchandise includingPickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books.[51]
The Sam Weller Bump testifies not merely to Dickens's comic genius but to his acumen as an "authorpreneur", a portmanteau he inhabited long beforeThe Economist took it up. For a writer who made his reputation crusading against the squalor of theIndustrial Revolution, Dickens was a creature of capitalism; he used everything from the powerful new printing presses to the enhanced advertising revenues to the expansion of railroads to sell more books. Dickens ensured that his books were available in cheap bindings for the lower orders as well as in morocco-and-gilt for people of quality; his ideal readership included everyone from the pickpockets who readOliver Twist to Queen Victoria, who found it "exceedingly interesting".
— Nina Martyris, HowThe Pickwick Papers Launched Charles Dickens's Career,The Paris Review, April 2015[51]
On its impact on mass culture, Nicholas Dames inThe Atlantic writes,"'Literature' is not a big enough category forPickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call 'entertainment'."[55] In November 1836 Dickens accepted the position of editor ofBentley's Miscellany, a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner.[56] In 1836, as he finished the last instalments ofThe Pickwick Papers, he began writing the beginning instalments ofOliver Twist—writing as many as 90 pages a month—while continuing work onBentley'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 childprotagonist.[57]
On 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and three ofThe Pickwick Papers, Dickens marriedCatherine Thomson Hogarth (1815–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of theEvening Chronicle.[58] They were married inSt Luke's Church,Chelsea, London.[59] After a brief honeymoon inChalk in Kent, the couple returned to lodgings atFurnival's Inn.[60] The first oftheir ten children, Charles, 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.[58][61] Dickens's younger brotherFrederick and Catherine's 17-year-old sisterMary Hogarth 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 Catherine stayed at a little farm onHampstead Heath for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary; the character he fashioned after her,Rose Maylie, he found he could not now kill, as he had planned, in his fiction,[62] and, according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of her for his later descriptions ofLittle Nell and Florence Dombey.[63] His grief was so great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment ofThe Pickwick Papers and had to cancel theOliver Twist instalment that month as well.[57] The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his unofficial business manager and the first to read his work.[64]
Barnaby Rudge was Dickens's first popular failure but the character of Dolly Varden—pictured in an1842 oil painting byWilliam Powell Frith—"pretty, witty, sexy, became central to numerous theatrical adaptations".[65]
His success as a novelist continued. The youngQueen Victoria read bothOliver Twist andThe Pickwick Papers, staying up until midnight to discuss them.[66]Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39),The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) and, finally, his first historical novel,Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, as part of theMaster Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.[67] Dickens's biographerPeter Ackroyd has calledBarnaby Rudge "one of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels".[68] The poetEdgar Allan Poe readBarnaby Rudge, and the novel's talking raven, Grip, who Dickens named after his own talking pet ravenGrip, inspired in part Poe's 1845 poem "The Raven".[69] Threeravens of the Tower of London have been named after Grip, the latest in 2012 to mark the bicentenary of Dickens's birth.[70]
In the midst of all his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, whileRichard Bentley signed over all his rights inOliver Twist. Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; inBroadstairs he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's best friend and one night grabbed her and ran with her down to the sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the "sad sea waves". She finally got free, and afterwards kept her distance. In June 1841, he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of Scotland and then, in September 1841, telegraphed Forster that he had decided to go to America.[71] His weekly periodicalMaster Humphrey's Clock ended, though Dickens was still keen on the idea of the weekly magazine, an appreciation that had begun with his childhood reading ofSamuel Johnson'sThe Idler and the 18th-century magazinesTatler andThe Spectator.[72]
Dickens was perturbed by the return to power of the Tories, whom he described as "people whom, politically, I despise and abhor."[73] He had been tempted to stand for theLiberal Party in Reading, but decided against it due to financial straits.[73] He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires ("The Fine Old English Gentleman", "The Quack Doctor's Proclamation" and "Subjects for Painters") which were published inThe Examiner.[74]
First visit to the United States
On 22 January 1842, Dickens and his wife arrived inBoston, Massachusetts, aboard theRMSBritannia during their first trip to the United States and Canada.[75] At this timeGeorgina 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.[76] She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870.[77] Dickens modelled the character ofAgnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary.[78]
A sketch of Dickens in 1842 during his first American tour. Sketch of Dickens's sister Fanny, bottom left
He described his impressions in atravelogue,American Notes for General Circulation. In it Dickens includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early asThe Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad[79] 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 criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in GovernorEdward John Eyre's harsh crackdown during the 1860sMorant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it.[80] FromRichmond, Virginia, Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westwards, with brief pauses inCincinnati andLouisville, Kentucky, toSt. Louis. 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 intoIllinois.
During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raisingthe question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America.[81][82] He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed byWashington Irving, to sign a petition for him to take to theUS 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.[83]
The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to the 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.[84] She writes that he assumed a role of "influential commentator", publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books.[84] His trip to the US ended with a trip to Canada—Niagara Falls, Toronto,Kingston, Ontario, and Montreal—where he appeared on stage in light comedies.[85]
Return to England
Dickens's portrait byMargaret Gillies, 1843. Painted during the period when he was writingA Christmas Carol, it was in theRoyal Academy of Arts' 1844 summer exhibition. After viewing it there,Elizabeth Barrett Browning said that it showed Dickens with "the dust and mud of humanity about him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes".[86]
Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories,A Christmas Carol, written in 1843, which was followed byThe Chimes in 1844 andThe Cricket on the Hearth 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.[87] 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 LaneRagged School, 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".[88]
Between 1843 and 1844Martin Chuzzlewit, the last of hispicaresque novels, was serialised. It includes the character ofSarah Gamp, a nurse who is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk, and also features one of the first literaryprivate detective characters, Mr Nadgett.[89] After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work onDombey and Son (1846–48).[90]
At about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother,Augustus, worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out byThomas Powell, 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 calledThe 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 (Dombey and Son) on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter toLewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the New York literary magazineThe Knickerbocker, saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in theNew-York Tribune 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.[91]
Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up a home for the redemption offallen women 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, namedUrania Cottage, in the Lime Grove area ofShepherd's Bush, which he managed for ten years,[92] setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents.[93] 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.[94]
Religious views
As a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organised religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titledSunday 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."[95][96]
Dickens honoured the figure ofJesus Christ.[97] He is regarded as a professing Christian.[98] His son,Henry Fielding Dickens, described him as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early 1840s, he had shown an interest inUnitarian Christianity andRobert Browning remarked that "Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian."[99] Professor Gary Colledge has written that he "never strayed from his attachment to popular layAnglicanism".[100] Dickens authored a work calledThe Life of Our Lord (1846), a book about the life of Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family.[101][102] In a scene fromDavid Copperfield, Dickens echoedGeoffrey Chaucer's use ofLuke 23:34 fromTroilus and Criseyde (Dickens held a copy in his library), withG. K. Chesterton writing, "among the greatcanonical English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common."[103]
Dickens disapproved ofRoman Catholicism and 19th-centuryevangelicalism, 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 likespiritualism, all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846.[104][105] While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as "that curse upon the world."[104] Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal AnglicanArthur Penrhyn Stanley's doctrine of "progressive revelation".[104]Leo Tolstoy andFyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer".[106][107]
Middle years
David reaches Canterbury, fromDavid Copperfield. The character incorporates many elements of Dickens's own life. Artwork byFrank Reynolds.
In December 1845 Dickens took up the editorship of the London-basedDaily News, a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to advocate, in his own words, "the Principles of Progress and Improvement, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal Legislation."[108] Among the other contributors Dickens chose to write for the paper were the radical economistThomas Hodgskin and the social reformerDouglas William Jerrold, who frequently attacked theCorn Laws.[108][109] Dickens lasted only ten weeks on the job before resigning due to a combination of exhaustion and frustration with one of the paper's co-owners.[108]
AFrancophile, Dickens often holidayed in France and, in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French, called the French "the first people in the universe".[110] During his visit to Paris, Dickens met the French literatiAlexandre Dumas,Victor Hugo,Eugène Scribe,Théophile Gautier,François-René de Chateaubriand andEugène Sue.[110] In early 1849 Dickens started to writeDavid Copperfield. It was published between 1849 and 1850. In Dickens's biography,Life of Charles Dickens (1872),John Forster wrote ofDavid Copperfield, "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life".[111] It was Dickens's personal favourite among his novels, as he wrote in the preface to the 1867 edition.[112] Hiscollection of letters, of which more than 14,000 are known, covered a wide range of subject-matter. Letters during this period included a correspondence with Mary Tyler, dated 6 November 1849, on the comedic merits ofPunch and Judy, a puppet show dominated by the anarchic clowning of Mr. Punch, and his review of theGreat Exhibition, the first in a series of world's fairs, which he attended atHyde Park, London, in 1851.[113] After theFirst Opium War Dickens viewed China through a lens of both mockery and fear, alluding to the Western "yellow peril" stereotype.[114] During his visit to the Great Exhibition, he scorned Chinese exhibits as symbols of stagnation, labelling them a "glory of yellow jaundice", writing progress was hindered by the isolationist approach of theQing dynasty with "China, shutting itself up, as far as possible, within itself."[115]
Illustration byPhiz of Chesney Wold, the Lincolnshire estate inBleak House
In late 1851, Dickens moved intoTavistock House where he wroteBleak House (1852–53),Hard Times (1854) andLittle Dorrit (1855–57).[116] A work incorporating Gothic elements such as the depiction of London as a murky city swathed infog,Bleak House is credited with introducing urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film.[117] Reflecting the public enthusiasm fordinosaurs that first developed in Victorian England, the opening ofBleak House contains an early mention of dinosaurs in literature: "it would not be wonderful to meet aMegalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard upHolborn Hill".[118]
While at Tavistock Dickens indulged in amateur theatricals, and he worked closely with the novelist and playwrightWilkie Collins.[119] In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buyGads Hill Place inHigham, Kent. As a child Dickens had walked past the house and dreamt of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events ofWilliam Shakespeare'sHenry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him.[120] During this time Dickens was also the publisher, editor and a major contributor to the journalsHousehold Words (1850–1859) andAll the Year Round (1858–1870), with both titles deriving from a Shakespearean quotation.[121] The journals contained a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and dealt with aspects in the culture. For example, the latter included Dickens's assessment ofMadame Tussauds, a wax museum established in Baker Street in 1835, which he called "something more than an exhibition, it is an institution."[122] In 1854, at the behest ofSir John Franklin's widowLady Jane, Dickens viciously attacked Arctic explorerJohn Rae inHousehold Words for his report to theAdmiralty, based on interviews with localInuit, that the members ofFranklin's lost expedition had resorted tocannibalism. These attacks would later be expanded on his 1856 playThe Frozen Deep, a collaboration with Wilkie Collins, which satirises Rae and the Inuit. Twentieth-centuryarchaeology work inKing William Island later confirmed that the members of the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism.[123]
In 1855, when Dickens's good friend the Liberal MPAusten Henry Layard formed an Administrative Reform Association to demand significant reforms of Parliament, Dickens joined and volunteered his resources in support of Layard's cause.[124] With the exception ofLord John Russell, who was the only leading politician in whom Dickens had any faith and to whom he later dedicatedA Tale of Two Cities, Dickens believed that the political aristocracy and their incompetence were the death of England.[124][125] When he and Layard were accused of fomenting class conflict, Dickens replied that the classes were already in opposition and the fault was with the aristocratic class. Dickens used his pulpit inHousehold Words to champion the Reform Association.[125] He also commented on foreign affairs, declaring his support forGiuseppe Garibaldi andGiuseppe Mazzini, helping raise funds for their campaigns and stating that "a united Italy would be of vast importance to the peace of the world, and would be a rock inLouis Napoleon's way," and that "I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born."[126][127][128] Dickens also published dozens of writings inHousehold Words supportingvaccination, including multiple laudations for the vaccine pioneerEdward Jenner.[129]
Following theIndian Mutiny of 1857, Dickens joined in the widespread criticism of theEast India Company for its role in the event, but reserved his fury for Indians, wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in India so that he would be able to "do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested."[130]
The actressEllen Ternan (pictured in 1858) drew the attention of Dickens after he saw her on stage in 1857.
In 1857 Dickens hired professional actresses forThe Frozen Deep, which he and hisprotégéWilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses,Ellen Ternan, and this passion was to last the rest of his life.[131] In 1858, when Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18, divorce would have been scandalous for someone of his fame. After publicly accusing Catherine of not loving their children and suffering from "a mental disorder"—statements that disgusted his contemporaries, includingElizabeth Barrett Browning[132]—Dickens attempted to have Catherineinstitutionalised.[133] When his scheme failed, they separated. Catherine left, never to see her husband again, taking with her one child. Her sister Georgina, who stayed at Gads Hill, raised the other children.[77]
During this period, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal byGreat Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis. His "Drooping Buds" essay inHousehold Words earlier on 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success.[134] Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founderCharles West, to preside over the appeal, and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul.[135] 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.[136][137][138]
Dickens at his desk, 1858
After separating from Catherine,[139] Dickens undertook a series of 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 novels.[140] His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland.[141] Dickens's continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes inNicholas Nickleby, and 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.[142]
Other works soon followed, includingA Tale of Two Cities (1859) andGreat Expectations (1861), which were resounding successes. Set in London and Paris,A Tale of Two Cities is his best-known work of historical fiction and includes the famous opening sentence "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It is regularly touted as one of the best-selling novels of all time.[143][144] Themes inGreat Expectations include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.[145]
In early September 1860, in a field behind Gads Hill, Dickens made a bonfire of most of his correspondence; he spared only letters on business matters. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her,[146] the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative.[147] In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself to a Canon Benham and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers.[148] Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, stated that the two had a son who died in infancy to biographer Gladys Storey in an interview before the former's death in 1929. Storey published her account inDickens and Daughter,[149][150] though no contemporary evidence was given. On his death, Dickens settled anannuity on Ternan which made her financially independent.Claire Tomalin's bookThe Invisible Woman argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. The book was turned into a play,Little Nell, bySimon Gray, anda 2013 film. During the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in theparanormal, becoming one of the early members ofThe Ghost Club in London.[151] In Christmas Eve of 1862, a theatrical production of his novella,The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, saw the first public demonstration of "Pepper's ghost"—a method of projecting the illusion of a ghost into a theatre (named after its developerJohn Henry Pepper)—which caused a sensation among those in attendance at theRegent Street theatre.[152]
On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was involved in theStaplehurst rail crash in Kent. The train's first seven carriages plunged off acast iron bridge that was under repair and ten passengers were killed.[157] The onlyfirst-class carriage to remain on the track—which was left hanging precariously off the bridge—was the one in which Dickens was travelling.[158] For three hours before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water.[158] Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript forOur Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it.[159]
Dickens later used the experience of the crash as material for his shortghost 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 previousrail accidents, such as theClayton Tunnel rail crash in Sussex of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at theinquest to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal.[160] After the crash, Dickens was nervous when travelling by train and would use alternative means when available.[161] In 1868 he wrote, "I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when riding in a hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable." Dickens's son, Henry, recalled, "I have seen him sometimes in a railway carriage when there was a slight jolt. When this happened he was almost in a state of panic and gripped the seat with both hands."[161]
Second visit to the United States
Crowd of spectators buying tickets for a Dickens reading atSteinway Hall, New York City, in 1867
While he contemplated a second visit to the United States, the outbreak of theCivil War in America in 1861 delayed his plans.[162] On 9 November 1867, over two years after the war, Dickens set sail fromLiverpool for his second American reading tour. Landing inBoston, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables asRalph Waldo Emerson,Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher,James T. Fields. In early December, the readings began. He performed 76 readings, netting £19,000, from December 1867 to April 1868.[163] Dickens shuttled between Boston and New York, where he gave 22 readings atSteinway Hall. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the "true Americancatarrh", he kept to a packed schedule, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing inCentral Park.[164]
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 atDelmonico's 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 theCunard linerRussia to return to Britain,[165] barely escaping afederal tax lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour.[166]
Farewell readings
Poster promoting a reading by Dickens inNottingham dated 4 February 1869, two months before he had a mild stroke
In 1868–69 Dickens gave a series of "farewell readings" in England, Scotland and Ireland, beginning on 6 October. He managed, of a contracted 100 readings, to give 75 in the provinces, with a further 12 in London.[163] As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis. He had a stroke on 18 April 1869 inChester.[167] He collapsed on 22 April 1869, inPreston, Lancashire; on doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled.[168] After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel,The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Described as a "dark and gothic" tale, his unfinished novel focuses on Drood's uncle, John Jasper, a drug-addicted choirmaster.[169] It was fashionable in the 1860s to 'do the slums' and, in company, Dickens visitedopium dens inShadwell in the East End of London, where he witnessed an elderly addict called "Laskar Sal", who formed the model for "Opium Sal" inEdwin Drood.[170]
After Dickens regained enough strength, he arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings to partly make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were 12 performances, on 11 January to 15 March 1870; the last at 8:00pm atSt James's Hall, London. Though in grave health by then, he readA Christmas Carol andThe Trial from Pickwick. On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at aRoyal Academy banquet in the presence of thePrince andPrincess of Wales, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend the illustrator Daniel Maclise.[171]
Death
Samuel Luke Fildes– The Empty Chair. Fildes was illustratingEdwin Drood at the time of Dickens's death. The engraving shows Dickens's empty chair in his study atGads Hill Place. It appeared in the Christmas 1870 edition ofThe Graphic and thousands of prints of it were sold.[172]
A 1905 transcribed copy of the death certificate of Charles Dickens
On 8 June 1870 Dickens had another stroke at his home after a full day's work onEdwin Drood. He never regained consciousness. The next day, he died at Gads Hill Place. His biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he had had the stroke and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gads Hill so that the public would not know the truth about their relationship.[173] Contrary to his wish to be buried atRochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner",[174] he was laid to rest inPoets' Corner inWestminster 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, 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.[175]
A letter from Dickens to the Clerk of thePrivy Council in March indicates he had been offered and accepted abaronetcy, which was not gazetted before his death.[176] His last words were "On the ground" in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.[177][nb 2] On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, DeanArthur 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, 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."[178]
In his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his £80,000 estate (£10,000,000 in 2023)[179] to his long-time 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 (equivalent to £1,000,000 in 2023).[179] He confirmed his wife Catherine's annual allowance of £600 (£70,000 in 2023).[179] He bequeathed £19 19s (£2,000 in 2023)[179] to each servant in his employment at the time of his death.[180]
Literary style
"The Night" scene inBleak House, depicting a murkyWestminster Bridge in London. Dickens set the Gothic novel in an urban environment.
Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various things, including thepicaresque novel tradition,[181]melodrama[182] and thenovel of sensibility.[183] According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him was derived from the fables ofThe Arabian Nights.[184] Satire andirony are central to the picaresque novel.[185] Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel tradition ofLaurence Sterne,Henry Fielding andTobias Smollett. Fielding'sTom Jones was a major influence on the 19th-century novelist including Dickens, who read it in his youth[186] and named a sonHenry Fielding Dickens after him.[187][188] Influenced byGothic fiction—a literary genre that began withThe Castle of Otranto (1764) byHorace Walpole—Dickens incorporated Gothic imagery, settings and plot devices in his works.[189] Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary urban environments: in particular London, such as Dickens'sOliver Twist andBleak House. The jilted brideMiss Havisham fromGreat Expectations is one of Dickens's best-known gothic creations; living in a ruined mansion, her bridal gown effectively doubles as her funeral shroud.[190]
No other writer had such a profound influence on Dickens asWilliam Shakespeare. On Dickens's veneration of Shakespeare,Alfred Harbage wrote inA Kind of Power: The Shakespeare-Dickens Analogy (1975) that "No one is better qualified to recognise literary genius than a literary genius".[191] Regarding Shakespeare as "the great master" whoseplays "were an unspeakable source of delight", Dickens's lifelong affinity with the playwright included seeing theatrical productions of his plays in London and putting on amateur dramatics with friends in his early years.[191] In 1838, Dickens travelled toStratford-upon-Avon and visited the house in which Shakespeare was born, leaving his autograph in the visitors' book. Dickens would draw on this experience in his next work,Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), expressing the strength of feeling experienced by visitors to Shakespeare's birthplace: the characterMrs Wititterly states, "I don't know how it is, but after you've seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one."[192]
Dickens's writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity.[193] Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to the artist and social criticHogarth 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.[194] 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.[193] To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone inDavid Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony coldness.[195] His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy andrealism. 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. On his ability to elicit a response from his works, the English screenwriterSarah Phelps writes, "He knew how to work an audience and how to get them laughing their heads off one minute or on the edge of their seats and holding their breath the next. The other thing about Dickens is that he loved telling stories and he loved his characters, even those horrible, mean-spirited ones."[196]
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.Marcus Stone, illustrator ofOur 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".[197] Dickens employsCockney English in many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears in terms such asain't, and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere (here) and wot (what).[198] An example of this usage is inOliver Twist. The Artful Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English, when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying "seven" with "sivin".[199]
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 characterMrs Gamp, and "Pickwickian", "Pecksniffian" and "Gradgrind" all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were, respectively,quixotic, hypocritical and vapidly factual. The character that made Dickens famous, Sam Weller became known for hisWellerisms—one-liners that turnproverbs on their heads.[51] Many were drawn from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, although she did not recognise herself in the portrait,[202] just as Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical exuberance';[203] Harold Skimpole inBleak House is based onJames Henry Leigh Hunt; his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher inDavid Copperfield.[204] Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting withHans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep (a term synonymous withsycophant).[205]
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".[206]T. S. Eliot wrote that Dickens "excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings".[207] One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself.[208] Dickens described London as amagic lantern, inspiring the places and people in many of his novels.[209] From thecoaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of theThames, all aspects of the capital—Dickens's London—are described over the course of his body of work.[209] Walking the streets (particularly around London) formed an integral part of his writing life, stoking his creativity. Dickens was known to regularly walk at least a dozen miles (19 km) per day, and once wrote, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish."[210]
Autobiographical elements
An original illustration byPhiz from the novelDavid 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 inBleak 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.[211] 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 theMarshalsea prison inLittle Dorrit resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution.[212] Lucy Stroughill, a childhood sweetheart, may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as Little Em'ly inDavid Copperfield and Lucie Manette inA Tale of Two Cities.[213][nb 3]
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 upLeigh Hunt, some critics have detected in his portrait features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by self-parody.[214]
Episodic writing
Advertisement forGreat Expectations, serialised in the weekly literary magazineAll the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861. The advert contains the plot device "to be continued".
A pioneer of theserial publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such asMaster Humphrey's Clock andHousehold Words, later reprinted in book form.[4][5] These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than before.[215] His instalment format inspired a narrative that he would explore and develop throughout his career, and the regularcliffhangers made each new episode widely anticipated.[6][215] WhenThe Old Curiosity Shop was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks inNew York harbour, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, "Is little Nell dead?"[216] Dickens was able to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. He wrote, "The thing has to be planned for presentation in these fragments, and yet for afterwards fusing together as an uninterrupted whole."[217]
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 inThe Old Curiosity Shop), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed inOliver 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.[218] When in 1863 the Jewish English readerEliza Davis wrote to rebuke him for having "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew" with the character of Fagin inOliver Twist, Dickens halted the second printing of the novel and made some changes to the original 1837 text.[219] He also created a group of sympathetic Jewish characters in his next novel,Our Mutual Friend, published 1864–1865.[220]
At the helm in popularising cliffhangers and serial publications in Victorian literature,[221] Dickens's influence can also be seen in televisionsoap operas andfilm series, withThe Guardian stating that "the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything."[222] His serialisation of his novels also drew comments from other writers. In the Scottish authorRobert Louis Stevenson's novelThe Wrecker, Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship, remarked: "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."[223]
Sarah Gamp (left) fromMartin Chuzzlewit became a stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms ofFlorence Nightingale.
Dickens's novels were, among other things, works ofsocial commentary.Simon Callow states, "From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it."[224] He was a fierce critic of the poverty andsocial stratification ofVictorian 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".[225] Dickens's second novel,Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it challenged middle class polemics about criminals, making impossible any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed.[226][227] Today,Dickensian is a term applied to insanitary social conditions or grim institutions akin to those denounced by Dickens in his work, with the Oxford professorPeter Conrad writing, "Dickens, likeBanksy, writes blackly prophetic graffiti on the wall."[228]
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. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues—such assanitation and theworkhouse—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, but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this condition is inHard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages of the machines they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes inThe Pickwick Papers are claimed to have been influential in having theFleet Prison shut down.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".[229]George Bernard Shaw even remarked thatGreat Expectations was more seditious than Marx'sDas Kapital.[229] The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853;Little Dorrit, 1857;Our Mutual Friend, 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored.Bleak House, a satire of protracted legal cases withJarndyce and Jarndyce—a fictional long-runningChancery case which has been cited by courts as a symbol of a legal case that interminably drags on—the central plot of the novel, helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment oflegal reform in England in the 1870s.[230]
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 ofCharles Darwin'sOn the Origin of Species.[231]
Literary techniques
Dickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with hiscaricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent inThe Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was received as extremely moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental byOscar Wilde. "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell", he said in a famous remark, "without dissolving into tears ... of laughter."[232][233]G. K. Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing 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.[234]
Less fortunate characters, such as Tiny Tim (held aloft by Bob Cratchit), are often used by Dickens in sentimental ways.
The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of thesentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her bookDickens and the Sentimental Tradition, sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "Dombey and Son is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition".[235] TheEncyclopædia Britannica online comments that, despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim inA Christmas Carol (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist".[236]
InOliver 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 youngpickpockets. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson inBleak House and Amy Dorrit inLittle Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence.[237] For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding'sTom Jones, which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.[238]
Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time,[239] and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never goneout of print,[240] and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema,[241] with at least 200 motion pictures and television adaptations based on Dickens's works documented.[242] Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime—early productions includedThe Haunted Man which was performed in theWest End'sAdelphi Theatre in 1848—and, as early as 1901, the British silent filmScrooge, or, Marley's Ghost was made byWalter R. Booth.[243] Contemporaries such as the publisherEdward Lloyd cashed in on Dickens's popularity with cheap imitations of his novels, resulting in his own popular 'penny dreadfuls'.[244]
Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest British novelist of theVictorian era.[1] From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare.[191] Dickens's literary reputation, however, began to decline with the publication ofBleak House in 1852–53. Philip Collins callsBleak House "a crucial item in the history of Dickens's reputation. Reviewers and literary figures during the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, saw a 'drear decline' in Dickens, from a writer of 'bright sunny comedy ... to dark and serious social' commentary".[245]The Spectator calledBleak House "a heavy book to read through at once ... dull and wearisome as a serial"; Richard Simpson, inThe Rambler, characterisedHard Times as "this dreary framework";Fraser's Magazine thoughtLittle Dorrit "decidedly the worst of his novels".[246] All the same, despite these "increasing reservations amongst reviewers and the chattering classes, 'the public never deserted its favourite'". Dickens's popular reputation remained unchanged, sales continued to rise, andHousehold Words and laterAll the Year Round were highly successful.[246]
"Charles Dickens as he appears when reading." Wood engraving fromHarper's Weekly, 7 December 1867.
As his career progressed, Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings were unparalleled. In 1868,The Times wrote, "Amid all the variety of 'readings', those of Mr Charles Dickens stand alone."[10] A Dickens biographer, Edgar Johnson, wrote: "It was [always] more than a reading; it was an extraordinary exhibition of acting that seized upon its auditors with a mesmeric possession."[10] The authorDavid Lodge called him the "first writer to be an object of unrelenting public interest and adulation".[247] Juliet John backed the claim for Dickens "to be called the first self-made global media star of the age of mass culture".[247] The word "celebrity" first appeared in theOxford English Dictionary in 1851, and the BBC states "Charles Dickens was one of the first figures to be called one".[248] Comparing his reception at public readings to those of a contemporary pop star—the BBC compared his reception in the US tothe Beatles—The Guardian states, "People sometimes fainted at his shows. His performances even saw the rise of that modern phenomenon, the 'speculator' orticket tout (scalpers)—the ones in New York City escaped detection by borrowing respectable-looking hats from the waiters in nearby restaurants."[248][249]
"Dickens's vocal impersonations of his own characters gave this truth a theatrical form: the public reading tour. No other Victorian could match him for celebrity, earnings, and sheer vocal artistry. The Victorians craved the author's multiple voices: between 1853 and his death in 1870, Dickens performed about 470 times."
—Peter Garratt inThe Guardian on Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings[10]
Among fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens.William Wordsworth thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work, while the novelistGeorge Meredith (1828–1909), found Dickens "intellectually lacking".[250] In 1888Leslie Stephen commented in theDictionary of National Biography that "if literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists".[251]Anthony Trollope'sAutobiography famously declared Thackeray, not Dickens, to be the greatest novelist of the age. However, bothLeo Tolstoy andFyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers. Dostoyevsky commented: "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!"[252] Tolstoy referred toDavid Copperfield as his favourite book, and he later adopted the novel as "a model for his own autobiographical reflections".[253] The French writerJules Verne called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels "stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression".[254] Dutch painterVincent van Gogh was inspired by Dickens's novels in several of his paintings, such asVincent's Chair, and in an 1889 letter to his sister stated that reading Dickens, especiallyA Christmas Carol, was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide.[255] Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature.[256] 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",[257] betrayed a "cavalier organisation".[258]Joseph Conrad described his own childhood in bleak Dickensian terms, noting he had "an intense and unreasoning affection" forBleak House dating back to his boyhood. The novel influenced his own gloomy portrait of London inThe Secret Agent (1907).[253]Virginia Woolf had a love-hate relationship with Dickens, finding his novels "mesmerizing" while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style.[259]
Advert for the Best Picture Oscar winnerOliver! (1968), an adaptation ofOliver Twist and one of over 200 works based on Dickens's novels
Around 1940–41, the attitude of the literary critics began to warm towards Dickens—led byGeorge Orwell inInside the Whale and Other Essays (March 1940),Edmund Wilson inThe Wound and the Bow (1941) and Humphry House inDickens and His World.[260] However, even in 1948,F. R. Leavis, inThe Great Tradition, asserted that "the adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness"; Dickens was indeed a great genius, "but the genius was that of a great entertainer",[261] though he later changed his opinion withDickens the Novelist (1970, withQ. D. (Queenie) Leavis): "Our purpose", they wrote, "is to enforce as unanswerably as possible the conviction that Dickens was one of the greatest of creative writers".[262] In 1944 the Soviet film director and film theoristSergei Eisenstein wrote an essay on Dickens's influence on cinema, such ascross-cutting—where two stories run alongside each other, as seen in novels such asOliver Twist.[263]
In the 1950s, "a substantial reassessment and re-editing of the works began, and critics found his finest artistry and greatest depth to be in the later novels:Bleak House,Little Dorrit andGreat Expectations—and (less unanimously) inHard Times andOur Mutual Friend".[264] Dickens was among the favourite authors ofRoald Dahl; the best-selling children's author would include three of Dickens's novels among those read by thetitle character in his 1988 novelMatilda.[265] In 2005,Paul McCartney, an avid reader of Dickens, namedNicholas Nickleby his favourite novel. On Dickens he states, "I like the world that he takes me to. I like his words; I like the language", adding, "A lot of my stuff—it's kind of Dickensian."[266] The screenwriterJonathan Nolan's screenplay forThe Dark Knight Rises (2012) was inspired byA Tale of Two Cities, with Nolan calling the depiction of Paris in the novel "one of the most harrowing portraits of a relatable, recognisable civilisation that completely folded to pieces".[267] On 7 February 2012, the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth,Philip Womack wrote inThe Telegraph: "Today there is no escaping Charles Dickens. Not that there has ever been much chance of that before. He has a deep, peculiar hold upon us".[268]
Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with which Dickens was associated. These include theCharles Dickens Museum in London, the historic home where he wroteOliver Twist,The Pickwick Papers andNicholas Nickleby; and theCharles Dickens' Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth, the house in which he was born.[269][270] 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 theVictoria and Albert Museum.[271] Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour—"I conjure to my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial or testimonial whatsoever. I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works".[272] Nonetheless, a life-size bronze statue of Dickens entitledDickens and Little Nell, cast in 1890 byFrancis Edwin Elwell, stands inClark Park in theSpruce Hill neighbourhood ofPhiladelphia, United States. Another life-size statue of Dickens is located atCentennial Park inSydney, Australia.[273] In 1960 abas-relief sculpture of Dickens, notably featuring characters from his books, was commissioned from the sculptor Estcourt J Clack to adorn the office building built on the site of his former home at 1 Devonshire Terrace, London.[274] In 2014, a life-size statue was unveiled near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by his great-great-grandsons, Ian andGerald Dickens.[275][276]
A Christmas Carol significantly influenced the modern celebration of Christmas in many countries.
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.[277] According to the historianRonald Hutton the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded byA 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.[278] Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness. "Merry Christmas", a prominent phrase from the tale, was popularised following the appearance of the story.[279] The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, and his exclamation"Bah! Humbug!'", a dismissal of the festive spirit, likewise gained currency as an idiom.[280] The Victorian-era novelistWilliam Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness".[277]
A statue of Dickens in his birthplacePortsmouth, Hampshire
Dickens was commemorated on the£10 note issued by theBank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene fromThe Pickwick Papers.[281]The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent.[282] A theme park,Dickens World, was open inChatham from 2007 to 2016. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2012, theMuseum of London held the UK's first major exhibition on the author in 40 years.[283] From September 2011 to February 2012, theMorgan Library & Museum in New York celebrated him with its exhibitionCharles Dickens at 200 with manuscripts, photographs, and original illustrations.[284]
Dickens and his publications have appeared on a number of postage stamps in countries including: the United Kingdom (1970, 1993, 2011 and 2012 issued by theRoyal Mail—their2012 collection marked the bicentenary of Dickens's birth),[289] theSoviet Union (1962), Antigua, Barbuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Dubai,Fujairah, Saint Lucia and theTurks and Caicos Islands (1970),Saint Vincent (1987),Nevis (2007),Alderney, Gibraltar, Jersey andPitcairn Islands (2012), Austria (2013) and Mozambique (2014).[290] In 1976a crater on the planetMercury was named in his honour.[291]
In November 2018 it was reported that a previously lost portrait of a 31-year-old Dickens, byMargaret Gillies, had been found inPietermaritzburg, South Africa. Gillies was an early supporter ofwomen's suffrage and had painted the portrait in late 1843 when Dickens, aged 31, wroteA Christmas Carol. It was exhibited, to acclaim, at theRoyal Academy of Arts in 1844.[86] TheCharles Dickens Museum is reported to have paid £180,000 for the portrait.[292]
Dickens published 15 major novels, several novellas, a large number of short stories (including a number of Christmas-themed stories), a handful of plays and several non-fiction books.
Novels and novellas
Most of Dickens's work was initially published in serial form, either weekly in magazines or monthly in free-standing instalments, then reprinted in standard book formats.
The Pickwick Papers (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837).[293] Novel.
The Haunted Man (The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-time; 1848). Novella.
David Copperfield (The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery [Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account]; monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850). Novel.
Bleak House (monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853). Novel.
Hard Times (Hard Times: For These Times; weekly serial inHousehold Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854). Novel.
Little Dorrit (monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857). Novel.
^John Forster quotes an unpublished letter in which Dickens responds to the accusation that he must not have seen Grimaldi in person: "Now, Sir, although I was brought up from remote country parts in the dark ages of 1819 and 1820 to behold the splendour of Christmas pantomimes and the humour of Joe, in whose honour I am informed I clapped my hands with great precocity, and although I even saw him act in the remote times of 1823 ... I am willing ... to concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi left the stage".[19] When Dickens arrived in America for the first time in 1842, he stayed at theTremont House, America's "pioneer first-class hotel". Dickens "bounded into the Tremont's foyer shouting out 'Here we are!', Grimaldi's famous catch-phrase and as such entirely appropriate for a great and cherished entertainer making his entrance upon a new stage."[20] Later, Dickens was known to imitate Grimaldi's clowning on several occasions.[21]
^A contemporary obituary inThe Times, alleged that Dickens's last words were: "Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of Art." Reprinted fromThe Times, London, August 1870 inBidwell 1870, p. 223.
^Slater also detects Ellen Ternan in the portrayal of Lucie Manette.
^Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", collected inThe Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York:Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 192
^Dickens, Charles (2013) [1836]."Sunday under Three Heads"(PDF). Electronics Classics Series. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 25 September 2014. Retrieved25 February 2019.
^Watts, Cedric Thomas (1976).The English novel. Sussex Books. p. 55.ISBN978-0905272023.
^abcRoberts, David (1989). "Charles Dickens and the "Daily News": Editorials and Editorial Writers".Victorian Periodicals Review.22 (2):51–63.JSTOR20082378.
^Slater, Michael (2015).Douglas Jerrold. Gerald Duckworth & Co. pp. 197–204.ISBN978-0715646588.
^abSoubigou, Gilles "Dickens's Illustrations: France and other countries" pp. 154–167 fromThe Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe edited by Michael Hollington London: A&C Black 2013 p. 159.
^Hiu Yen Lee, Klaudia (2015).Charles Dickens and China, 1895–1915: Cross-Cultural Encounters. Taylor & Francis. p. 56.
^Winyard, Ben; Mackenzie, Hazel (2013). "From 'The Great Exhibition to the Little One' to 'China with a Flaw in It': China, Commodities and Conflict in Household Words. Hannah Lewis-Bill".Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, 1850-1870. University of Buckingham Press.
^Forster, John (2008) [1875]."Chapter 20".The Life of Charles Dickens. Vol. III. Project Gutenberg. p. 462.Archived from the original on 15 July 2019. Retrieved5 March 2019.
^abHowsam, Leslie (2015).The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book. Cambridge University Press. p. 85.It inspired a narrative that Dickens would explore and develop throughout his career. The instalments would typically culminate at a point in the plot that created reader anticipation and thus reader demand, generating a plot and sub-plot motif that would come to typify the novel structure.
^British Broadcasting Corporation. Third Programme, Charles John Hamson (1953).Law Reform and Law Making: A Reprint of a Broadcast Talks. W. Heffer. p. 16.
^Adam Roberts, "Reputation of Dickens",Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens, ed. Paul Schlicke, Oxford University Press. Print publication date: 2000ISBN9780198662532 Published online: 2011 (subscription required) eISBN9780191727986, p. 504.
^Soubigou, Gilles "Dickens's Illustrations: France and other countries" pp. 154–167 fromThe Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe edited by Michael Hollington London: A&C Black 2013 p. 161.
^Soubigou, Gilles, "Dickens's Illustrations: France and other countries", pp. 154–167, fromThe Reception of Charles Dickens in Europe edited by Michael Hollington. London: A&C Black, 2013, pp. 164–165.
Black, Joseph Laurence (2007)."Charles Dickens". In Black, Joseph Laurence (ed.).The age of romanticism. The Victorian era. The twentieth century and beyond. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 2. Broadview Press. pp. 735–743.ISBN978-1-55111-869-7.Archived from the original on 19 November 2016. Retrieved18 February 2016.
Flint, Kate (2001). "The middle novels:Chuzzlewit,Dombey andCopperfield". In Jordan, John O (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-66964-1.
Furneaux, Holly (2011)."Childhood". In Ledger, Sally; Furneaux, Holly (eds.).Dickens in Context. Cambridge University Press. pp. 186–193.ISBN978-0-521-88700-7.Archived from the original on 25 October 2015. Retrieved2 July 2015.
Kucich, John; Sadoff, Dianne F (2006)."Charles Dickens". In Kastan, David Scott (ed.).The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, Volume. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 154–164.ISBN978-0-19-516921-8.Archived from the original on 19 November 2016. Retrieved18 February 2016.
Levin, Harry (Autumn 1970). "Charles Dickens (1812–1870)".The American Scholar.39 (4).
Patten, Robert L (2001). "FromSketches toNickleby". In Jordan, John O (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-66964-1.
Sasaki, Toru (2011)."Modern screen adaptations". In Ledger, Sally; Furneaux, Holly (eds.).Dickens in Context. Cambridge University Press. pp. 67–73.ISBN978-0-521-88700-7.Archived from the original on 19 September 2015. Retrieved2 July 2015.
Smith, Grahame (2001). "The Life and Times of Charles Dickens". In Jordan, John O (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-66964-1.
Jarvie, Paul A (2005).Ready to Trample on All Human Law: Finance Capitalism in the Fiction of Charles Dickens. Studies in Major Literary Authors. New York: Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-97524-7.
Johnson, Edgar,Charles Dickens: his tragedy and triumph, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. In two volumes.
Joshi, Prithi (2011)."Race". In Ledger, Sally; Furneaux, Holly (eds.).Dickens in Context. Cambridge University Press. pp. 292–300.ISBN978-0-521-88700-7.Archived from the original on 19 November 2016. Retrieved18 February 2016.
Meckier, Jerome (2002).Dickens's Great Expectations: Misnar's Pavilion Versus Cinderella. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.ISBN978-0-813-12228-1.
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