The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837)
Comic travels of Mr Pickwick's club and his Cockney servant Sam Weller
Literature · Novelists
Charles Dickens
1812–1870 · English
Victorian novel; social realism and comedy
Charles Dickens, the most popular novelist of the Victorian age, published most of his fiction in monthly or weekly instalments, from The Pickwick Papers to the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood. Drawing on a childhood marked by his father's imprisonment for debt and his own work in a blacking factory, he created a vast gallery of characters and attacked poverty, the workhouse, the law and industrial society.
How to spot them
- ▸Pen name 'Boz'; Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers
- ▸Scrooge, Fagin, Miss Havisham, Uriah Heep, Mr Micawber, Sydney Carton
- ▸Father imprisoned in the Marshalsea; boyhood work at Warren's Blacking warehouse
- ▸Gad's Hill Place in Kent; buried in Westminster Abbey
- ▸Survived the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865
Key works
Oliver Twist (1837–1839)
Workhouse orphan who falls among Fagin's pickpockets, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes and Nancy
A Christmas Carol (1843)
Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost and three spirits of Christmas
David Copperfield (1849–1850)
His most autobiographical novel, featuring Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and Betsey Trotwood
Bleak House (1852–1853)
The endless Chancery suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce; Esther Summerson, Lady Dedlock and Inspector Bucket
Hard Times (1854)
Utilitarian schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind and the industrial town of Coketown
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
London and Paris during the French Revolution; Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay and Madame Defarge
Great Expectations (1860–1861)
Orphan Pip, the convict Magwitch, the jilted Miss Havisham and Estella
Key ideas
- Serial publication in cheap monthly parts built a mass readership and shaped his cliffhanger plotting
- Satire of institutions: the workhouse and Poor Law, Chancery, debtors' prisons and the 'Circumlocution Office'
- Popularised the modern Christmas of family, charity and goodwill
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Landport, Portsmouth; died at Gad's Hill Place, near Rochester, Kent
- •A Tale of Two Cities opens: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'
- •A Christmas Carol opens: 'Marley was dead: to begin with.'
- •Bleak House opens with the one-word sentence 'London.'
- •Oliver asks: 'Please, sir, I want some more.'
- •Other novels include Nicholas Nickleby (Dotheboys Hall, Wackford Squeers), The Old Curiosity Shop (Little Nell), Barnaby Rudge (the Gordon Riots), Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend
- •Edited the weekly magazines Household Words and All the Year Round
- •Married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and separated from her in 1858; his companion was the actress Ellen Ternan
- •Gave hugely popular public readings in Britain and the United States
- •The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left unfinished at his death in 1870
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Charles Dickens
- Claire Tomalin — Charles Dickens: A Life