| Name | Charles John Huffam Dickens |
| Pen Name | Boz |
| Nationality | British |
| Born | February 7, 1812 |
| Died | June 9, 1870 |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | Self-taught |
| Genre | Victorian literature |
| Notable Works | The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist |
| Notable Awards | NA |
| Height | 5 feet 8 inches |
| Spouses | Catherine Dickens |
| Children | Charles Dickens Jr.
Mary Dickens
Kate Perugini
Walter Landor Dickens
Francis Dickens
Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens
Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens
Henry Fielding Dickens
Dora Annie Dickens
Edward Dickens |
| Official Website | www.charlesdickenspage.com |
Born on 7th February 1812 in Portsmouth, England, Dickens had seven siblings. His father was employed as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. When Dickens was four years old, his family moved to the town of Sheerness before coming to live in Chatham, Kent. It’s where they stayed till he was 11 years old.
Dickens was always a voracious reader and would resort to books such as Gil Blas and Robinson Crusoe. Throughout his life, he also kept returning to The Arabian Nights and the works of the English novelist Elizabeth Inchbald.
The family went through some truly dark times, with tragedy striking in 1824. It was when his father was sent to prison due to the mountain of debt dangling on his head.
Dickens soon had to leave school and was forced to take on manual labor at a factory. Therefore, his formal education ended at the tender age of 15.
Dickens’ professional life started with him being a shorthand reporter. Like some other family members, he became a newspaper and parliamentary reporter.
He started contributing essays and short stories to periodicals in 1833. His first story, A Dinner at Popular Walk, was published in December of 1833 in the Monthly Magazine. It was in the following year when he took on the pen name Boz and went on to publish Sketches by Boz in 1836.
Despite his career taking off as a novelist, Dickens carried on his journalistic work, contributing to newspapers and magazines. He was an editor for All the Year Round, Household Words, and The Daily News.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club were published monthly before publishing as The Pickwick Papers in 1837. It was an absolute hit, and Dickens became a household name in the following months.
He continued to work constantly in the upcoming years, producing books such as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge. American Notes, released in 1842, came about after he visited the United States and Canada with his wife.
This particular trip was also a part of the influence that led to the development of Martin Chuzzlewit. Soon after, Dickens developed five Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man.
While this series was being published, Dickens spent his time in Switzerland and Italy and witnessed success in works such as Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.
Two novels he created before his demise were Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Writing Style And Approach
When it comes to Dickens’ writing style, there are a couple of patterns and elements that keep reappearing throughout his pieces of literature, including:
- Picaresque
- Autobiographical
- Melodrama
- The novel of sensibility
The fact that authors draw from their own life to create characters and stories is quite natural and evident. Still, in Dickens’ case, the elements of autobiography were very strongly felt.
David Copperfield, for example, is considered almost an autobiography of the writer. The legal battles and issues portrayed in Bleak House could remind one of the time Dickens spent being a court reporter and law clerk.
Getting sent to prison for being unable to repay your debts is a theme that keeps showing up in many of Dickens’ novels, and it’s reminiscent of his father going to prison for the same reason. Even the love affairs he had often got reflected in some of his well-crafted female characters.
Instances of his narrative fiction and episodic writing style come from his works being initially released as weekly or monthly installments in periodicals and magazines.
Due to this episodic inclination, his chapters left readers wanting more, wondering what would come after the previous cliffhanger. His narrative style was also influenced by the critique he received from his buddies and readers.
While many debates whether the literary genre of the sentimental novel affected Dickens’ works or not, it cannot be denied that the writer did provide a contrast to his melodramatic or extremely sentimental plots and scenes by including whimsical characters and caricatures.
Dickens explored several themes in his novels, with some common links being childhood, corruption, crime, desire, abuse, and exploitation.
Everything he observed around him during his childhood, such as poverty and social situations, made their way into his work.
More than anything else, his novels were social commentaries, delineating the poverty that prevailed during the Victorian era and the very prominent social stratification. He became the voice of the commoners, which was one of the many reasons the public respected him.
Be it through his journalistic work or his fiction; he brought attention to problematic issues rarely spoken about openly, such as the problem of sanitation and the condition of the workhouses in Britain.
At a time when political correctness was the norm, Dickens subverted the traditional system by shedding light on crime and poverty, as was very vividly seen in Oliver Twist. This novel surprised the readers because it openly challenged the hypocrisy of those in power who were refusing to acknowledge how those belonging to the poor class were conveniently forgotten.
Not only did he discuss the disadvantages faced by the working class within society, but he also elaborated on how the upper class oppressed and exploited them. Hard Times by Dickens is a prime example of the author writing about the industrial working class.
During a period when Britain’s power as a political and economic entity around the world was more evident than ever, he dared to portray the privileged individuals through his satire, bringing attention to how the factory workers were often just called ‘hands,’ eliminating their identity as human beings.
Among the individuals who influenced Dickens’ work, a notable one was Tobias Smollett, a Scottish novelist, and playwright. Much like Dickens, Smollett followed the adventurous style of fiction, as seen in his novel The Adventures of Roderick Random.
Smollett’s work encouraged Dickens to focus deeply on descriptions in his novels, as was proven through a novel like David Copperfield.
Along with Smollett, Dickens was also inspired by the English writer, Henry Fielding, known for his works such as The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, and Amelia. Dickens was such a huge admirer of Fielding’s work that he even named one of his sons after him.
However, the one literary figure who had the biggest influence on Dickens was Shakespeare. Deriving great pleasure and delight from his writing, Dickens would see the numerous productions of Shakespeare’s plays during his younger years.
In 1838, Dickens visited the house that witnessed Shakespeare’s birth, an experience he very subtly incorporated in his book, Nicholas Nickleby, wherein one of the characters travels to see the great playwright’s birthplace.
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum contains the original manuscripts of several of Dickens’ novels along with illustrations and first editions derived from the collection of John Forster, a friend of the author.
The will left behind by Dickens made it clear that he didn’t want a memorial to be constructed in his memory. However, a life-size bronze statue of the renowned writer at Clark Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, exists.
The statue is Dickens and Little Nell and was created by Francis Edwin Elwell in 1890.
While Portsmouth is the home of the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, there is also the Charles Dickens Museum in London which serves as the historic landmark of where he crafted Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, and Oliver Twist.
Dickens was honored by the Bank of England when his portrait was put on the series E £10 note in circulation between 1992 and 2003. Broadstairs, a town in England, has a high school named after him, The Charles Dickens School.
In a survey by the BBC in the UK in 2003 regarding the most loved novels of all time, five of Dickens’ novels made it to the list. He was also named among the greatest Western writers of all time, according to Harold Bloom, a respected literary critic.
Charles Dickens did not receive any awards or honors for his work in literature during his lifetime. It’s because back then, the awards were less commonly given to writers than they are today.
Charles Dickens was a celebrated English writer and social critic known for his vivid characters and commentary on social issues, making him a literary icon of the Victorian era.
