CHARLES DICKENS

The writer of poverty, injustice, crime and comedy

Presentation –
Atrayee Dutta, First Year, English Dept.
HIS LIFE
 Born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812.
 At the age of twelve, he left school went to work in a
factory after his father was imprisoned for debt.
 At the age of fifteen, he began working as a clerk in a
lawyer’s office but since he wanted a different career,
he started working as a reporter a year later.
 In 1833 he started fiction and in 1836 his first work,
Sketches by Boz. His first full-scale work of fiction
was The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club ,
known simply as The Pickwick Papers , published
from 1836-37. His novels appeared in magazines in
monthly installments.
VICTORIAN ERA
  The period of 
Queen Victoria's reign
from 20 June 1837 until
her death, on 22 January
1901. It was a long
period of peace,
prosperity, refined
sensibilities and national
self-confidence for Britain
.
 During the 1800s the
Industrial Revolution
spread throughout
Britain. A massive
increase in the number of
 The Industrial Revolution had
created profound economic
and social changes. Hundreds
of thousands of workers had
migrated to industrial towns,
where they made up a new
kind of working class. Wages
were extremely low, hours
very long — fourteen a day,
or even more. Employers
often preferred to hire women
and children, who worked for
even less then men. Families
lived in horribly crowded,
unsanitary housing.
PROBLEMS OF THE ERA
 Unemployment
 Rioting
 Poverty
 Child Labor
 Development of Slums
 Unhealthy living and
working conditions
 Prostitution
 Widespread crime
 Class difference
DICKEN’S WORKS
  Despite his lack of formal education, he
edited a weekly journal for 20 years,
wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds
of short stories and non-fiction articles,
lectured and performed extensively, was
an indefatigable letter writer, and
campaigned vigorously for children's
rights, education, and other social
reforms.
NOTABLE WORKS
 The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
 (Known as "The Pickwick Papers") (Monthly
serial, April 1836 to November 1837)[170]
 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, April 1840 to
November 1841)
 Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of
Eighty (Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock
NOTABLE WORKS cont…
 A Christmas Carol (1843)
 The Life and Adventures of Martin
Chuzzlewit (Monthly serial, January 1843
to July 1844)
 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)
NOTABLE WORKS cont…
 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)
 The Mystery of Edwin Drood (never completed by
Dickens)
SETTING OF HIS WORKS
 Dickens works were mainly set in cities, especially
London.

 He depicted London at three different social levels:

1. the parochial world of the workhouses  its
inhabitants belong to the lower middle class.
2. the criminal world  murderers, pickpockets
living in squalid slums.
3. the Victorian middle class  respectable
people believing in human dignity.
 THEMES OF HIS WORKS
Poverty, family ,
childhood
Oppression of the poor

and the working-class

Helplessness of children,

especially of those
belonging to the lower
social strata. (Oliver
Twist , David
Copperfield )
Apalling living conditions

in slums ( Bleak
House )
 Corruption in goverment
( Bleak House )
 Faults of the legal system

( Oliver Twist )
 Horrors of factory

employment and child

labour ( David Copperfield ,
Hard Times)
 Class Difference ( Great

Expectations )
 The dark criminal world of

Victorian London ( Oliver

Twist )
 HIS STYLE
 Presence of autobiographical elements in his works
 Often regarded as the greatest creator of character
in English fiction after Shakespeare. Dickensian 
characters are amongst the most memorable in
English literature, especially so because of their
typically whimsical names. The likes of 
Ebenezer Scrooge,  Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, 
Fagin, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, , 
David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber,  Daniel Quilp, 
Samuel Pickwick, and Uriah Heep are so well known
as to be part and parcel of British culture, and in
some cases have passed into ordinary language:
a scrooge, for example, is a miser. Many were drawn
from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother,
 Characters from Oliver
Twist
Characters from David
Copperfield
 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.
 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.
 Most of Dickens's major novels were first written in monthly

or weekly instalments in journals such as Master

Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, later reprinted in
book form. These instalments made the stories affordable
and accessible, and the series of regular cliff-hangers made
each new episode widely anticipated.
DEATH
 On 8 June 1870, Dickens
suffered another stroke at his
home after a full day's work
on Edwin Drood. He never
regained consciousness, and
the next day, on 9 June
1870, he died.
  Contrary to his wish to be
buried at 
Rochester Cathedral "in an
inexpensive, unostentatious,
and strictly private manner,"
[114] he was laid to rest in the 

Poets' Corner of 
Westminster Abbey.
LEGACY

 Dickens as a social commentator exerted

a profound influence on later novelists
committed to social analysis. Some of his
concerns with the Condition-of-England
Question were further dealt with in the
novels of Charles Kingsley, George Eliot,
George Gissing, George Orwell, and
recently in the postmodern novels of
Martin Amis and Zadie Smith.
 Dickens was the most popular novelist of his
time, and remains one of the best-known and
most-read of English authors. His works have
never gone out of print,and have been adapted
continually for the screen since the invention of
cinema . 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.[150] He created some of the world's best-
known fictional characters and is regarded as
the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.