http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/dickens/society.

html

http://charlesdickenspage.com/index.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/dickens/index.html

http://www.dickens-literature.com/l_biography.html

John Dickens, however, had a small collection of books which were kept in a little room
upstairs that led out of Charles’s own, and in this attic the boy found his true literary
instructors in Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphry Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar
of Wakefield, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe. The story of how he played at the
characters in these books and sustained his idea of Roderick Random for a month at a
stretch is picturesquely told in David Copperfield. Here as well as in his first and last
books and in what many regard as his best, Great Expectations, Dickens returns with
unabated fondness and mastery to the surroundings of his childhood. From seven to nine
years he was at a school kept in Clover Lane, Chatham, by a Baptist minister named
William Giles, who gave him Goldsmith’s Bee as a keepsake when the call to Somerset
House necessitated the removal of the family from Rochester to a shabby house in
Bayham Street, Camden Town.

He was one of the most rapid and accurate reporters in London when, at nineteen years
of age, in 1831, he realized his immediate ambition and “entered the gallery” as
parliamentary reporter to the True Sun. Later he was reporter to the Mirror of Parliament
and then to the Morning Chronicle. Several of his earliest letters are concerned with his
exploits as a reporter, and allude to the experiences he had, travelling fifteen miles an
hour and being upset in almost every description of known vehicle in various parts of
Britain between 1831 and 1836. The family was now living in Bentwick Street,
Manchester Square, but John Dickens was still no infrequent inmate of the sponging-
houses. With all the accessories of these places of entertainment his son had grown to be
excessively familiar. Writing about 1832 to his school friend Tom Mitton, Dickens tells
him that his father has been arrested at the suit of a wine firm, and begs him go over to
Cursitor Street and see what can be done. On another occasion of a paternal
disappearance he observes: “I own that his absence does not give me any great
uneasiness, knowing how apt he is to get out of the way when anything goes wrong.” In
yet another letter he asks for a loan of four shillings.

Of all my books,” Dickens wrote, “I like this the best; like many fond parents I
have my favourite child, and his name is David Copperfield.” In some respects it
stands to Dickens in something of the same relation in which the contemporary
Pendennis stands to Thackeray. As in that book, too, the earlier portions are the best.
They gained in intensity by the autobiographical form into which they are thrown; as
Thackeray observed, there was no writing against such power. The tragedy of Emily and
the character of Rosa Dartle are stagey and unreal; TJ’riah Heep is bad art; Agnes,
again, is far less convincing as a consolation than Dickens would have us believe; but
these are more than compensated by the wonderful realization of early boyhood in the
book, by the picture of Mr Creakie’s school, the Peggottys, the inimitable Mr Micawber,
Betsy Trotwood and that monument of selfish misery, Mrs Gummidge.

At the end of March 1850 commenced the new twopenny weekly called Household
Words, which Dickens planned to form a direct means of communication between himself
and his readers, and as a means of collecting around him and encouraging the talents of
the younger generation. No one was better qualified than he for this work, whether we
consider his complete freedom from literary jealousy or his magical gift of inspiring
young authors

The first series of Sketches by Boz was published in 1836, and that same year Dickens was hired to
write short texts to accompany a series of humorous sporting illustrations by Robert Seymour, a popular
artist. Seymour committed suicide after the second number, however, and under these peculiar
circumstances Dickens altered the initial conception of The Pickwick Papers , which became a novel
(illustrated by Hablot K. Browne, "Phiz," whose association with Dickens would continue for many years).
The Pickwick Papers continued in monthly parts through November 1837, and, to everyone's surprise, it
became an enormous popular success. Dickens proceeded to marry Catherine Hogarth on April 2, 1836,
and during the same year he became editor of Bentley's Miscellany, published (in December) the second
series of Sketches by Boz, and met John Forster, who would become his closest friend and confidant as well
as his first biographer.

After the success of Pickwick, Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work
of increasing complexity at an incredible rate, although he continued, as well, his journalistic and editorial
activities. Oliver Twist was begun in 1837, and continued in monthly parts until April 1839. It was in 1837,
too, that Catherine's younger sister Mary, whom Dickens idolized, died. She too would appear, in various
guises, in Dickens's later fiction. A son, Charles, the first of ten children, was born in the same year.

Dickens had no artistic ideals worth speaking about. The sympathy of his readers was
the one thing he cared about and, like Cobbett, he went straight for it through the
avenue of the emotions. In. personality, intensity and range of creative genius he can
hardly be said to have any modern rival. His creations live, move and have their being
about us constantly, like those of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Rabelais, Cervantes,
Shakespeare, Bunyan, Moliere and Sir Walter Scott. As to the books themselves, the
backgrounds on which these mighty figures are projected, they are manifestly too vast,
too chaotic and too unequal ever to become classics. Like most of the novels constructed
upon the unreformed model of Smollett and Fielding, those of Dickens are enormous
stock-pots into which the author casts every kind of autobiographical experience,
emotion, pleasantry, anecdote, adage or apophthegm. The fusion is necessarily very
incomplete and the hotch-potch is bound to fall to pieces with time. Dickens’s plots, it
must be admitted, are strangely unintelligible, the repetitions and stylistic decorations of
his work exceed all bounds, the form is unmanageable and insignificant. The diffuseness
of the English novel, in short, and its extravagant didacticism cannot fail to be most
prejudicial to its perpetuation. In these circumstances there is very little fiction that will
stand concentration and condensation so well as that of Dickens.

conclusion

For these reasons among others our interest in Dickens’s novels as integers has
diminished and is diminishing. But, on the other hand, our interest and pride in him as a
man and as a representative author of his age and nation has been steadily augmented
and is still mounting. Much of the old criticism of his work, that it was not up to a
sufficiently high level of art, scholarship or gentility, that as an author he is given to
caricature, redundancy and a shameless subservience to popular caprice, must now be
discarded as irrelevant.

As regards formal excellence it is plain that Dickens labours under the double
disadvantage of writing in the least disciplined of all literary genres in the most lawless
literary milieu of the modern world, that of Victorian England. In spite of these defects,
which are those of masters such as Rabelais, Hugo and Tolstoy, the work of Dickens is
more and more instinctively felt to be true, original and ennobling. It is already
beginning to undergo a process of automatic sifting, segregation and crystallization, at
the conclusion of which it will probably occupy a larger segment in the literary
consciousness of the English-spoken race than ever before.

7 February 1812–9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz," was the most popular English novelist of the
Victorian era, and one of the most popular of all time, responsible for some of English
literature's most iconic characters.[1]

Many of his novels, with their recurrent theme of social reform, first appeared in magazines
in serialised form, a popular format for fiction at the time. Unlike other authors who
completed entire novels before serial production began, Dickens often wrote them while they
were being serialized, creating them in the order in which they were meant to appear. The
practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one cliffhanger after another to
keep the public looking forward to the next installment.[2] The continuing popularity of his
novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print.[3]

His work has been praised for its mastery of prose and unique personalities by writers such as
George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, though the same characteristics prompted others, such
as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, to criticize him for sentimentality and implausibility

Novels

 The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
(Monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)
[81]
 The Adventures of Oliver Twist (Monthly serial
in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April
1839)
 The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
(Monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839)
 The Old Curiosity Shop (Weekly serial in Master
Humphrey's Clock, 25 April 1840, to 6 February
1841)
 Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
(Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13
February 1841, to 27 November 1841)
 The Christmas books:
o A Christmas Carol (1843)
o The Chimes (1844)
o The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
o The Battle of Life (1846)
o The Haunted Man and the Ghost's
 Dombey and Son (Monthly serial,
October 1846 to April 1848)
 David Copperfield (Monthly serial,
May 1849 to November 1850)
 Bleak House (Monthly serial, March
1852 to September 1853)
 Hard Times: For These Times (Weekly
serial in Household Words, 1 April
1854, to 12 August 1854)
 Little Dorrit (Monthly serial,
December 1855 to June 1857)
 A Tale of Two Cities (Weekly serial in
All the Year Round, 30 April 1859, to
26 November 1859)
 Great Expectations (Weekly serial in
All the Year Round, 1 December 1860
to 3 August 1861)
 Our Mutual Friend (Monthly serial,
May 1864 to November 1865)
 Bargain (1848)  The Mystery of Edwin Drood
 The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Monthly serial, April 1870 to
(Monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844) September 1870. Only six of twelve
planned numbers completed)

was Dickens' occasional pen-name, but was a familiar name in the Dickens household long before
Charles became a famous author. It was actually taken from his youngest brother Augustus Dickens'
family nickname 'Moses', given to him in honor of one of the brothers in The Vicar of Wakefield (one
of the most widely read novels during the early 19th century). When playfully pronounced through
the nose 'Moses' became 'Boses', and was later shortened to 'Boz' – pronounced through the nose
with a long vowel 'o'.[

A well-known personality, his novels proved immensely popular during his lifetime. His first
full novel, The Pickwick Papers (1837), brought him immediate fame, and this success
continued throughout his career. Although rarely departing greatly from his typical
"Dickensian" method of always attempting to write a great "story" in a somewhat
conventional manner (the dual narrators of Bleak House constitute a notable exception), he
experimented with varied themes, characterisations, and genres. Some of these experiments
achieved more popularity than others, and the public's taste and appreciation of his many
works have varied over time. Usually keen to give his readers what they wanted, the monthly
or weekly publication of his works in episodes meant that the books could change as the story
proceeded at the whim of the public. Good examples of this are the American episodes in
Martin Chuzzlewit which Dickens included in response to lower-than-normal sales of the
earlier chapters.

Although his popularity has waned a little since his death, he continues to be one of the best
known and most read of English authors. At least 180 motion pictures and TV adaptations
based on Dickens's works help confirm his success.[54] Many of his works were adapted for
the stage during his own lifetime and as early as 1913 a silent film of The Pickwick Papers
was made

Dickens is often described as using 'idealised' characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast
with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity
Shop (1841) was received as incredibly moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously
sentimental by Oscar Wilde. "You would need to have a heart of stone", he declared in one of his
famous witticisms, "not to laugh at the death of Little Nell." [52] (although her death actually takes
place off-stage). In 1903 G. K. Chesterton said, "It is not the death of Little Nell, but the life of Little
Nell, that I object to."

Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the
poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839),
shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime and was responsible for the clearing of the
actual London slum, Jacob's Island, that was the basis of the story. In addition, with the character of
the tragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens "humanised" such women for the reading public; women who
were regarded as "unfortunates", inherently immoral casualties of the Victorian class/economic
system. Bleak House and Little Dorrit elaborated expansive critiques of the Victorian institutional
apparatus: the interminable lawsuits of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak
House and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient, corrupt patent offices and unregulated market
speculation.

Dickens loved the style of 18th century Gothic romance,[citation needed] although it had already
become a target for parody.[citation needed] One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is
London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the
Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his body of work.

His writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British
aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular.
Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to
furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. Many of his characters' names
provide the reader with a hint as to the roles played in advancing the storyline, such as Mr.
Murdstone in the novel David Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of "murder" and
stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism.

Death sccene

Dickens would go on to write 15 major novels and countless short stories and
articles before his death on June 9, 1870. He wished to be buried, without
fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, but the Nation would not allow it. He
was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands
of mourners overflowing the open grave. Among the more beautiful bouquets
were many simple clusters of wildflowers, wrapped in rags