Charles Dickens, b. Portsea, England, Feb. 7, 1812, d. June 9, 1870, was a popular Victorian novelist, now regarded as one of the greatest English writers.
 His novels combine vast social panoramas, deep compassion for the lower class, melodramatic intensity and pathos, and comic exuberance.
 Dickens's renowned public readings of his works caused his audiences to laugh and weep; the enduring power of his writing is evident in the fact that his works are still widely read, taught, and performed in modern dramatizations.
   Life
Dickens was born into a family whose genteel aspirations were thwarted by his father's carelessness with money.
When Dickens was 12 his father, John, was imprisoned for debt, an event that Dickens considered the most terrible experience of his life. 
Removed from school and put to work in a blacking (shoe-dye) factory, he lived alone, ashamed and frightened, in a lodging house in North London.
Although his father came into an inheritance after only a few months, Dickens could not mention this until long after his success as a novelist was assured.
 His fear of rejection by his parents and the loss of the genteel life later found expression in the lives of the orphans in his novels.
Dickens eventually returned to school, but his financial difficulties were not over. 
When he was 15 he went to work as a clerk in a law firm. Later he became a reporter, first of dull law cases and then of parliamentary debates, experiences that were to shape his social consciousness.
 Like the title character of David Copperfield (1850), Dickens was a phenomenally quick stenographer. 
An acute observer with a dedication to hard work, he began writing comic-pathetic sketches that revealed his talent for focusing upon eccentricity of character. 
These sketches were first collected in Sketches by Boz (1836).
   Works
Dickens's success began with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37), now known as The Pickwick Papers. 
Invited to write the narrative to accompany a series of sporting sketches drawn by Robert Seymour, Dickens objected to his subordinate position and forced Seymour out, 
replacing him with Hablot K. Brown ("Phiz"), who remained Dickens's primary illustrator for more than 20 years.
The first number of The Pickwick Papers, published on Mar. 31, 1836, required only 400 copies; the fourth required 40,000. 
Although he began writing on only two days' notice and barely stayed ahead of monthly deadlines, as was to be the case for most of his career, Dickens became internationally famous in four months.
 One of the most humorous books in the English language, Pickwick nonetheless develops a serious undercurrent of concern with law and justice. 
It also reflects the continuing connection between Dickens's life and works in that Mr. Pickwick, like Dickens's father, serves time in debtor's prison.
Dickens's energy was evident throughout his career.
 While writing Pickwick he became editor of a monthly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, which he made instantly successful. 
When Oliver Twist (1837-39) was being serialized in Bentley's, he was editing a biography of the clown Joseph Grimaldi.
 With Oliver Twist half completed, he began monthly installments of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39).
In 1836, concurrently with the composition of Pickwick, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, and the couple had ten children.
 The marriage was, however, deeply unhappy and complicated by the premature death of Catherine's sister, Mary, for whom Dickens had a strong affection;
 his love affair with the young actress Ellen Ternan, purported to be the model for the heroines in his later novels; 
and his commitment to the reading public and the public performance of his works. Dickens separated from Catherine in 1858.
In March 1840, Dickens started a weekly periodical, Master Humphrey's Clock, in which he published The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) and Barnaby Rudge (1840-41). 
In book form (1841), The Old Curiosity Shop achieved a circulation of over 100,000. Beginning with A Christmas Carol (1843), Dickens published annual Christmas stories. 
In 1850 he established the weekly journal Household Words, which became All the Year Round in 1859.
 At the same time that he was involved in editing, writing for, and controlling these journals, Dickens continued to write novels and helped to establish a home for reformed prostitutes and to press for slum clearance,
 education reform, sanitary measures, and the numerous social issues reflected in his works.
As early as Oliver Twist, Dickens's deep concern about modern society was evident. 
His early works implied faith in the new commercial middle class as opposed to the old aristocracy. 
As the first great urban novelist, however, he saw the failures of the business ethic. 
While remaining capable of presenting the comic face of a tragic world, Dickens became increasingly disenchanted.
 When he began to address social issues directly, as in Dombey and Son (1848), and to organize his novels around clear themes and dominant images, many critics lamented the loss of the warm-hearted comedian of The Pickwick Papers.
 The image of a corrupt judicial system presiding through a vast fog pervades the narrative of Bleak House (1853), often critically regarded as Dickens's masterpiece, although not his most popular work. In Little Dorrit (1857) the prison haunts almost every character.
 Our Mutual Friend (1865), Dickens's last finished novel, expresses his increasing anger and disillusionment.
   Evaluation
Criticism is only now beginning to come to terms with the richness, variety, and intensity of Dickens's works. 
He has been accused of caricaturing and of setting his novels in what John Ruskin called "a circle of stage fire," 
but such internationally acclaimed writers as Dostoyevsky and Kafka recognized Dickens's genius and borrowed from him.
When Dickens died, with his last novel (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870) still incomplete, he was an embittered man.
 He is, however, remembered as an author successfully committed to bringing joy into the bleakness of urban life. 
The power of his novels grows from their capacity to record accurately and yet remake the world, to transform the ordinary into something magical. 
In works ranging from Hard Times (1854), a satire of Victorian education and a portrayal of the ugliness of factory life, through A Tale of Two Cities (1859), which depicts the excitement and chaos of revolutions, to Great Expectations (1860-61), a sensitive study of a boy's development into a man,
 Dickens remains a master storyteller whose works are laced with wit and social satire.
 They provide the reader with new insights into the most obscure corners of human experience.
George Levine
 
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