English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian
period. Dickens's works are charactericized by attacks on
social evils, unjustice, and hypocrisy. He had also
experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end
school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens's lively
good, bad and comic characters, such as the cruel miser
Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the
trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated
generations of readers.
Charles Dickens was born in
Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which
created misery for the class of low-paid workers and gave
birth to theories of Karl Marx. His father was a clerk in the
navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended in
financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then
to Chatham, where he received some education. He worked in a
blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his family
was in Marshalea debtor's prison in 1824 - later this period
found its way to the novel Little Dorrit (1855-57). In 1824-27
Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at
Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law
office clerk, and then worked as a shorthand reporter at
Doctor's Commons. He wrote for True Son (1830-32), Mirror of
Parliament (1832-34) and the Morning Chronicle (1834-36). He
was in the 1830s a contributor to Monthly Magazine, and The
Evening Chronicle and edited Bentley's Miscellany. In the
1840s Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the
London Daily News.
These years as a journalist left
Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious
attitude towards unjust laws. His sharp ear for conversation
helped him reveal characters through their own words.
Dickens's career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when
his short stories and essays to appeared in periodical. His
SKETCHES BY BOZ and THE PICKWICK PAPERS were published in
1836; he married in the same year the daughter of his friend
George Hogarth, Catherine Hogart. However, some people
suspected that he was more fond of her sister, Mary, who moved
into their house and died in 1837. Dickens requested that he
be buried next to her when he died and wore Mary's ring all
his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in
with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her.
Dickens had with Catherine 10 children but they were separated
in 1858. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress
Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s.
The
Pickwick Papers were stories about a group of rather odd
individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath and
elsewhere. Dickens's novels first appeared in monthly
instalments, including OLIVER TWIST (1837-39), which depicts
the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver
Twist, NICHOLAS NICKELBY (1838-39), a tale of young Nickleby's
struggles to seek his fortune, and OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
(1840-41). Among his later works are DAVID COPPERFIELD
(1849-50), where Dickens used his own personal experiences of
work in a factory, BLEAK HOUSE (1852-53), A TALE OF TWO CITIES
(1859), set in the years of the French Revolution. GREAT
EXPECTATIONS (1860-61), the story of Pip (Philip Pirrip), was
among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. The
unfinished mystery novel THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD was
published in 1870.
From the 1840s Dickens spent much
time travelling and campaigning against many of the social
evils of his time. In addition he gave talks and reading,
wrote pamphlets, plays, and letters. In the 1850s Dickens was
founding editor of Household World and its successor All the
Year Round (1859-70). In 1844-45 he lived in Italy,
Switzerland and Paris. He gave lecturing tours in Britain and
the United States in 1858-68. From 1860 Dickens lived at
Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent. He died at Gadshill on
June 9, 1870.
Although Dickens's career as a novelist
received much attention, he produced hundreds of essays and
edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various
periodicals he edited. Dickens distinquished himself as an
essayis in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. 'A Visit to Newgate'
(1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in
the Marshalea Prison. In 'A Small Star in in the East' reveals
the working conditions on mills and 'Mr. Barlow' (1869) draws
a portrait of a unsensitive tutor.
|