The World of Charles Dickens

We’re on the move…

• We’ve been in the Renaissance (1500 – 1650)• Next is the Neo-Classical Period (1660 – 1798)• Dryden• Defoe• Pope • Johnson• Boswell

On to

• The Romantic Period (1798 – 1837)

• Burns

• Blake

• Wordsworth

• Coleridge

• Byron

And then into

• The Victorian Period (1837 – 1901)

• Dickens Housman

• Hardy

• Thackery

• Tennyson

• Browning (both)

• Brontes (both)

Dickens’ Biography

• Born February 7, 1812

• 1824 -- Dickens worked at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse

• 1824 -- Mr. Dickens (Charles’ father) taken to debtors’ prison; family joins him

• Imprisoned from February - May

More Bio

• 1827 - Dickens family evicted from home for not paying rent

• Charles is pulled out of private school

• Charles, now 15, becomes law clerk and free-lance writer

• 1834 - Charles takes Boz as pen name

• 1834 - Charles’ Dad re-arrested for debts

Dickens starts Publishing!

• 1836 -- Sketches by Boz

• 1837 -- The Pickwick Papers

• and on a personal note...

“Here Comes the Bride…”

• 1836 (Dickens is 24) he and Catherine Hogarth get married

• and..one year later, the first “little Dickens” is born

• and one year after that, baby # 2 is born...

but, back to business!

• 1837-- Oliver Twist is serially published

What was happening in 1837?

• King William IV of England dies

• Victoria becomes queen of England

• Benjamin Disraeli delivers his first speech in the House of Commons

And in the arts?

• Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes Twice Told Tales – it becomes a best seller

• William H. Prescott publishes The History of the Reign of Isabella and Ferdinand

• John Constable died (English landscape painter)

• Berlioz completes “Grande Messe des Morts,” Opus 5

Two Constables

• “Flatford Lock and Mill” 1812

• “The White Horse” – 1819

In the sciences

• Industrialist August Borsig opens iron foundry and engine-building factory in Berlin

• Wheatstone and Cooke patent electric telegraph

• Samuel Morse exhibits his electric telegraph• Dutchman Johannes Diderik born (Nobel

Prize in physics in 1910)

And then

• 1838 -- Nicholas Nickleby

• 1840 -- The Old Curiosity Shop

• 1841 -- Barnaby Rudge

• 1842 -- American Notes

Back to Dickens“And the beat goes on”

• 1843 -- A Christmas Carol

• 1844 -- Martin Chuzzlewit

• 1844 -- The Chimes

• 1845 -- The Cricket on the Hearth

• 1846 -- The Battle of Life

• 1846 -- Dombey and Son

And so it goes...

• 1850 -- David Copperfield

• 1853 -- Bleak House

• 1853 -- A Child’s History of England and... a near nervous breakdown

• 1854 -- Hard Times

• 1857 -- Little Dorrit

Is he done yet?

• 1859 -- A Tale of Two Cities

• 1861 -- Great Expectations

• 1865 -- Our Mutual Friends

• 1869 -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished)

What’s the Point?

• Dickens wrote 15 major novels in a career spanning 33 years.

• His peak of creativity and literary prowess was in mid - late career from 1848 - 1865.

Dickens’ Best

• Bleak House

• Little Dorrit

• Great Expectations

• Our Mutual Friend

And in the meantime

• He fathered 10 children.

• His wife left him (in 1856).

• He gave numerous talks across Europe and in America.

• He developed heart trouble.

He exercised his social conscience

• He crusaded for children’s rights.

• He was an advocate of child labor laws to protect children.

• He opposed cruelty, deprivation, and corporal punishment of children.

• He believed in and lobbied for just treatment of criminals.

In addition,

• He protested a greedy, uncaring, materialistic society through such works as A Christmas Carol, which Dickens called “a sledgehammer” he used figuratively to wake up the reading public

• He repeatedly used satire to highlight problems in his society

More good works

• He gave 16 public readings in 1858 to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children

And in 1865… a key year

He published a novel (Our Mutual Friends), got frostbite, and survived a

terrible train crash

A sad ending

• 1870 -- Dickens, who had been in declining health since 1866, died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

• He is buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in London

Westminster Abbey

Poets’ Corner

• Dickens’ epitaph: “He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers is lost to the world.”

What about Oliver Twist?

• Dickens wrote, “I wished to show in little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse circumstance and triumphing at last.”

Themes

• The powerlessness of children

• Good’s ability to triumph over evil

• Man’s humanity to man

• Man’s inhumanity to man

• The outcast’s search for status and identity

• The heinous nature of crime and criminals

What to watch (out) for...

• Use of irony

• Use of coincidence

• Use of humor

Definitions, please

• Situational irony = a discrepancy between what the reader expects and what actually happens

Dickens’ Belief:

“To be thoroughly earnest is everything, and to be anything short of it is nothing.”