The World of Charles Dickens

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The World of Charles Dickens
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Were on the move

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

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On to

• The Romantic Period (1798 1837)
• Burns
• Blake
• Wordsworth
• Coleridge
• Byron

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And then into

• The Victorian Period (1837 1901)
• Dickens Housman
• Hardy
• Thackery
• Tennyson
• Browning (both)
• Brontes (both)

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Dickens Biography

• Born February 7, 1812
• 1824 -- Dickens worked at Warrens Blacking
  Warehouse
• 1824 -- Mr. Dickens (Charles father) taken to
  debtors prison family joins him
• Imprisoned from February - May

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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

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Dickens starts Publishing!

• 1836 -- Sketches by Boz
• 1837 -- The Pickwick Papers
• and on a personal note...

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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...

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but, back to business!

• 1837-- Oliver Twist is serially published

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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

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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

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Two Constables

• Flatford Lock and Mill 1812
• The White Horse 1819

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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)

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And then

• 1838 -- Nicholas Nickleby
• 1840 -- The Old Curiosity Shop
• 1841 -- Barnaby Rudge
• 1842 -- American Notes

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Back to DickensAnd 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

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And so it goes...

• 1850 -- David Copperfield
• 1853 -- Bleak House
• 1853 -- A Childs History of England and... a
  near nervous breakdown
• 1854 -- Hard Times
• 1857 -- Little Dorrit

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Is he done yet?

• 1859 -- A Tale of Two Cities
• 1861 -- Great Expectations
• 1865 -- Our Mutual Friends
• 1869 -- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished)

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Whats 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.

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Dickens Best

• Bleak House
• Little Dorrit
• Great Expectations
• Our Mutual Friend

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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.

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He exercised his social conscience

• He crusaded for childrens 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.

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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

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More good works

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

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And in 1865 a key year

• He published a novel (Our Mutual Friends), got
  frostbite, and survived a terrible train crash

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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

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Westminster Abbey
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Poets Corner

• Dickens epitaph He was a sympathizer to the
  poor, the suffering, and the oppressed and by
  his death, one of Englands greatest writers is
  lost to the world.

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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.

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Themes

• The powerlessness of children
• Goods ability to triumph over evil
• Mans humanity to man
• Mans inhumanity to man
• The outcasts search for status and identity
• The heinous nature of crime and criminals

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What to watch (out) for...

• Use of irony
• Use of coincidence
• Use of humor

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Definitions, please

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

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Dickens Belief

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