Charles Dickens

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be
held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I
record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at
night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
(Charles Dickens)

As a prolific 19th Century author of short stories, plays, novellas, novels, fiction and
non, during his lifetime Dickens became known the world over for his remarkable
characters, his mastery of prose in the telling of their lives, and his depictions of the social
classes, mores and values of his times. Some considered him the spokesman for the poor, for
he definitely brought much awareness to their plight, the downtrodden and the have-nots.
He had his share of critics like Virginia Woolf and Henry James, but also many admirers, even
into the 21st Century.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at Landport in Portsea
Island, the second of eight children to John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office (1785
1851) and Elizabeth Dickens (ne Barrow; 17891863).
When Dickens father was transferred to Chatham in Kent County, the family settled
into the genteel surroundings of a larger home with two live-in servantsone being Mary
Weller who was young Charles nursemaid. Dickens was a voracious reader of such authors
as Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe, and Oliver Goldsmith. When he was not attending the school
of William Giles where he was an apt pupil, he and his siblings played games of makebelieve, gave recitations of poetry, sang songs, and created theatrical productions that would
spark a lifelong love of the theatre in Dickens. But household expenses were rising and in
1824, John Dickens was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea Prison. All of the family
went with him except for Charles who, at the age of twelve, was sent off to work at
Warrens Shoe Blacking Factory to help support the family, pasting labels on boxes. He
lived in a boarding house in Camden Town and walked to work everyday and visited his
father on Sundays. It was one of the pivotal points in Dickens education from the
University of Hard Knocks and would stay with him forever. The idyllic days of his
childhood were over and he was rudely introduced to the world of the working poor, where
child labour was rampant and few if any adults spared a kind word for many abandoned or
orphaned children. Many of his future characters like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and
Philip Pirrip would be based on his own experiences. The appalling working conditions,
long hours and poor pay typical of the time were harsh, but the worst part of the experience
was that when his father was released his mother insisted he continue to work there. While
he felt betrayed by and resented her for many years to come, his father arranged for him to
attend the Wellington House Academy in London as a day pupil from 1824-1827, perhaps
saving him from a life of factory work and setting him on the road to becoming a writer.
In 1827 the Dickens were evicted from their home in Somers Town for unpaid rent dues and
Charles had to leave school. He obtained a job as a clerk in the law firm of Ellis and
Blackmore. He soon learned shorthand and became a court reporter for the Doctors
Commons. He spent much of his spare time reading in the British Museums library and
studying acting. In 1830 he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, though her father sent

her to finishing school in Paris a few years later. In 1833, his first story of many, A Dinner
at Poplar Walk was published in the Monthly Magazine. He also had some sketches
published in the Morning Chronicle which in 1834 he began reporting for and adopted the
pseudonym Boz. At this time Dickens moved out on his own to live as a bachelor at
Furnivals Inn, Holborn. His father was arrested again for debts and Charles bailed him out,
and for many years later both his parents and some of his siblings turned to him for financial
assistance.
Dickens first book, a collection of stories titled Sketches by Boz was published in
1836, a fruitful year for him. He married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of
the Evening Chronicle on 2 April, 1836, at St. Lukes in Chelsea. A year later they moved
into 48 Doughty Street, London, now a museum. The couple would have ten children:
Charles Culliford Boz (b.1837), Mary (Mamie) (1838-1838), Kate Macready (b.1839),
Walter Landor (b.1841), Francis (Frank) Jeffrey (b.1844), Alfred Tennyson (b.1845),
Sydney Smith (b.1847), Henry Fielding (b.1849), Dora Annie (1850-1851), Edward Bulwer
Lytton (b.1852). Also in the same year, 1836, Dickens became editor for Bentleys
Miscellany of which Pickwick Papers(1836-1837) was first serialised.
Thus began a prolific and commercially successful period of Dickens life as a writer.
Most of his novels were first serialised in monthly magazines as was a common practice of
the time.
Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picaresque novels which he found in
abundance on his father's shelves. According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most
important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of The Arabian Nights.
His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity.Satire, flourishing in his
gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to Hogarth 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. Charles
Dickens published over a dozen major novels, a large number of short stories (including a
number of Christmas-themed stories), a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books.
Dickens's novels were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted
in standard book formats.
Dickens's First Writings
The Christmas Books
A Comprehensive List of Dickens's Short Fiction, 1833-1868
Editions of Dickens's Novels, 1847-1990

1836 "Dinner at Poplar Walk"

1836 Sketches by Boz text
1836-37 Pickwick Papers
1837-39 Oliver Twist
1838-39 Nicholas Nickleby
1840-41 The Old Curiosity Shop
1841 Barnaby Rudge text
1843 Martin Chuzzlewi
A Christmas Carol
1844 The Chimes text
1845 The Cricket and the Hearth

1846 The Battle of Life

1846-48 Dombey and Son
1848 The Haunted Man
1849-50 David Copperfield
1851-53 Bleak House
1854 Hard Times
1855-57 Little Dorrit
1857 The Frozen Deep
1857 "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners"
1859 A Tale of Two Cities
1860, "The Italian Prisoner" text
1860-61 Great Expectations
1864-65 Our Mutual Friend text
1869-70 The Mystery of Edwin Drood text
Nonfiction
Dickens as Editor and Co-Author
American Notes (1842)
Charles Dickens's "Frauds on the Fairies"
Pictures from Italy
"The Lost Arctic Voyagers" (1854)
The Uncommercial Traveller
"The Laboratory in the Chest" A Dickensian Popularization of a lecture by
Faraday
"The Chemistry of a Candle"
"The Chemistry of a Pint of Beer" (
"The Mysteries of the Tea-kettle"
A Bundle of Emigrants' Letters (1850)
Oliver Twist
It is not surprising that the novel that is probably Charles Dickensmost famous was
first met with controversy. Many Victorian readers believed that the violent and upsetting
content of the novel was not appropriate for middle-class readers, but Dickens wrote the
biting satire Oliver Twist to attack the same public policies regarding the poor that his own
family was forced to endure. The novels main characterthe young orphan Oliveris
born in a workhouse and then raised in Londons criminal underworld. Despite these
harsh circumstances, Oliver remains an uncorrupted and virtuous child who is a victim of
circumstances rather than his own moral failings. Although Dickens, as he says in the 1841
preface to the third edition of Oliver Twist, sought to show in Oliver the principle of Good
surviving through every adverse circumstance and triumphing at last, two of the most
engaging and complex characters in the novel turn out to be the prostitute Nancy and the
juvenile pickpocket known as the Artful Dodger. Consequently, the heart of the novel lives
within this problematic and sometimes false tension between purity and corruption.

David Copperfield
"Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond
parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I
love themBut, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child.
And his name is David Copperfield."Charles Dickens, 1867
Told from a first-person point of view, David Copperfield is Dickens most
autobiographical work, a classic bildungsroman that traces a boys struggle to find his place
in the world and to master his undisciplined heart. Like all of Dickens novels, David
Copperfield bursts with memorable characters (the ever-hopeful Wilkins Micawber, the
creepy Uriah Heep) and probes the social injustices of the time. But David Copperfield is,
most significantly, a book about memory. Through it Dickens confronts the most painful
time in his own lifehis experience working at a blacking factory when he was 12. Like
David, who calls it a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of,
Charles Dickens (who shared the same initials as David CopperfieldD.C.but reversed
C.D.) believed that this one experience marked him forever, which perhaps explains why
there is a helpless or persecuted child at the center of so many of his novels. But in David
Copperfield, which follows Davids journey from birth to a successful adult life as an
author, it is Davids ability to use memory to make sense of and integrate all his
experiences, whether happy or traumatic, thatmakes him, in the end, truly the hero of [his]
own life.
Little Dorrit
Although Little Dorrit is considered one of Charles Dickens social novels, many
of the societal failings it criticizes had already been reformed by the time Dickens first
published the novel in serial form from 1855 to 1857. Most notably, Little Dorrit exposes
how detrimental English debtors prisons proved to be for the families who were sent to live
there indefinitely; however, such prisons had been abolished even before Dickens first
began to write the story of little Amy Dorrit (who was born and raised in the confines of
the famous Marshalsea debtors prison). The following activities will help students dig
deeper into Dickens motivation for writing such a novelif not for reform purposes, what
does the legacy of imprisonment symbolize for Dickens own past and for the lives of his
characters? Clearly, one of the most significant messages of the novel seems to be that
moneythe key to escaping debtors prisondoes not magically lead characters to escape
their own neuroses. In fact, money seems to have its own imprisoning power.
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, five years
to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to
be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private
manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Cornerof Westminster 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." His last words were: "On
the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.

On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey,
Dean Arthur 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.
Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with
which Dickens was associated, such as the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum
in Portsmouth, the house in which he was born. 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 the Victoria and Albert Museum.Dickens's will
stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour.