Charles Dickens

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Standard Name: Dickens, Charles
Birth Name: Charles John Huffam Dickens
Indexed Name: Charles Dickens
Pseudonym: Boz
Pseudonym: Timothy Sparks
A prolific novelist, journalist, and editor of periodicals such as Household Words and All the Year Round, CD crucially shaped Victorian fiction both by developing it as a dialogical, multi-plotted, and socially aware form and by his innovations in publishing serially. As a novelist he worked across a range of genres, including the bildungsroman, picaresque, Newgate, sensation and detective fiction, and usually with satiric or socially critical force. He was loved by readers for his humour, grotesquerie, action, and vigour. An influential public figure and phenomenally successful lecturer during his lifetime, his work continues to be central to popular understandings of nineteenth-century England, and in particular London.
Head-and-shoulders daguerrotype of Charles Dickens by Jeremiah Gurney of New York City, 1867-8. Dickens has a goatee beard, moustache, and hair combed forward on each side of his bald patch.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Celia Moss
CM was born at Portsea, a waterfront area of Portsmouth in Hampshire (where Charles Dickens had been born a few years before her), the fourth in a family of twelve children.
“Jewish Encyclopedia”. JewishEncyclopedia.com, 2002.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Birth Daisy Ashford
Margaret Mary Julia Ashford (who wrote as DA ) was born at Elm Lodge in Petersham, Surrey, a house once inhabited by Dickens and now the home of her paternal grandmother and her aunt...
Cultural formation Adelaide Procter
AP may have converted to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism by this date; certainly she had by 1851.
Sources conflict on the date of AP 's conversion, most of them dating it in 1851. Bessie Rayner Parkes
Cultural formation Mary Angela Dickens
MAD was born into a large English family of writers and artists headed by her grandfather Charles Dickens . Accounts of her life document her close relationships with several generations of paternal and maternal family...
death Mary Angela Dickens
MAD died in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, exactly 136 years after her grandfather Charles Dickens was born.
Christodoulou, Glenn A. “The Grave of Mary Angela Dickens Rediscovered”. The Dickensian, Vol.
109
, No. 489, 1 Mar.–31 May 2013, pp. 42-43.
42
Education Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth read early and voraciously, polishing off Anna Maria Hall 's three-volume Marian when she was only seven. By nine she was reading Scott and Dickens . One of the family servants introduced her...
Education Isabella Banks
Her education was supplemented both by a good home library and by her parents' wide cultural circle. She led a lively social life in Manchester, attending Anti-Corn Law League bazaars, and soirées at the Manchester Athenæum
Education Sarah Grand
There she read authors such as Dickens , Scott , and Thackeray .
Grand, Sarah. Sex, Social Purity and Sarah Grand: Volume 1. Editor Heilmann, Ann, Routledge, 2000.
253
She took advantage of the cultivated atmosphere in which she grew up, and yet later judged that she had been neither...
Education Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW 's family encouraged her in the regular pursuits of a young, middle-class Victorian woman. From her father she inherited an enthusiasm for poetry—she especially liked Shakespeare , Coleridge , and Whitman —and she read...
Education Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary's mother was probably her most important teacher. She told her stories which, no matter how outlandish and fantastic, the very young Rosemary accepted as literal truth; she later imparted all kinds of varied information...
Education Marie Belloc Lowndes
One of the earliest books that Marie could remember was Pierre et Pierrette, a celebrated little text written by her grandmother Belloc to improve the education of French village children. She grew up conscious...
Education Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM ) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Education Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
She read voraciously, preferring writers with the geographical rootedness which she herself lacked: George Eliot , Thomas Hardy , Charles Dickens , and from beyond the English tradition Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Henry James
Education Alice Munro
AM has mentioned two texts in particular as early influences: Andersen 's The Little Mermaid (whose ending upset her so much that she made up an alternative happy ending) and Dickens 's A Child's History...
Education Frances Eleanor Trollope
Their mother educated the sisters.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
FET had a wonderful singing voice. Later in her life, with the financial assistance of Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope , she travelled to Florence to study singing; her mother...

Timeline

February 1778: Franz Anton Mesmer, inventor of animal magnetism,...

Building item

February 1778

Franz Anton Mesmer , inventor of animal magnetism, arrived in Paris to promote his theory.
Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism: and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Harvard University Press, 1968.
3-4

15 February 1791: The actress Harriet Pye Esten (daughter of...

Writing climate item

15 February 1791

The actress Harriet Pye Esten (daughter of novelist Anna Maria Bennett ) gave a highly successful recitation at Covent Garden Theatre of William Collins 's Ode on the Passions.
Maycock, Christopher. A Passionate Poet: Susanna Blamire, 1747-94: A Biography. Hypatia, 2003.
91-2

3 June 1829: Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership...

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3 June 1829

Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794 - ­1871) (who, in order to do this, had just dissolved the partnership between himself and his brother Samuel Bentley as printers).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Richard Bentley, 1794-1871

1830: William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans...

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1830

William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans went into partnership and established the publishing firm of Bradbury and Evans in London.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 62

4 February 1832: Robert and William Chambers began publishing...

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4 February 1832

Robert and William Chambers began publishing the weekly Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
112-13
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne, 1983.
19
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.

1833: Edward Lloyd, trained as a stenographer at...

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1833

Edward Lloyd , trained as a stenographer at a Mechanics Institute, established his own publishing firm with the appearance of Lloyd's Stenography, written, published, and promoted by himself.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 173-4

January 1835: John Macrone established his own publishing...

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January 1835

John Macrone established his own publishing business at 3 St James Street, London.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 196

4 November 1836: Richard Bentley (1794-1871) signed an agreement...

Writing climate item

4 November 1836

Richard Bentley (1794-1871) signed an agreement with Dickens to edit his new monthly periodical, Bentley's Miscellany.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Richard Bentley, 1794-1871
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

3 May 1841: The London Library, established by Thomas...

National or international item

3 May 1841

The London Library , established by Thomas Carlyle with Harriet Martineau , Dickens , Thackeray , and others, first opened its doors.
The London Library. http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk.
“OSA Staff”. Oxford Spires Academy.
“Members’ News”. The Author, No. 29, 1 Sept.–30 Nov. 2015, p. 31.

March 1843: The Society of British Authors was forme...

Writing climate item

March 1843

The Society of British Authors was formed.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. “The Institutionalisation of the British Book Trade of the 1890s”. Development of English Book Trade: 1700-1899, edited by Robin Myers and Michael Harris, Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1981.
101

1844: The Ragged School Union was founded and began...

Building item

1844

The Ragged School Union was founded and began opening schools in the slums of great cities.
Martin, Christopher. A Short History of English Schools, 1750-1965. Wayland, 1979.
16, 110
Borer, Mary Cathcart. Willingly to School: A History of Women’s Education. Lutterworth Press, 1976.
257
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
661

1851: Johann and Bertha Ronge established at Hampstead...

Building item

1851

Johann and Bertha Ronge established at Hampstead the first kindergarten in England, a school designed to foster physical and mental development in young children.
Storey, Graham et al., editors. The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Seven 1853-1855. Vol. 7, Clarendon Press, 1993.
520

2 September 1852: The Manchester Free Library, the first major...

Building item

2 September 1852

The Manchester Free Library , the first major British public lending library, opened in Manchester.
Black, Alistair. A New History of the English Public Library: Social and Political Contexts, 1850-1914. Leicester University Press, 1996.
70
Kelly, Thomas. A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain 1845-1975. 2nd ed., Library Association, 1977.
27
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
303-4

28 August 1857: The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, also...

National or international item

28 August 1857

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, also known as the Divorce Act, made divorce more readily available, but on unequal grounds for women and men.
Hammerton, A. James. Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life. Routledge, 1992.
199
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
92
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
20, 24
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 1989.
378
The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Printed by J. Bentham, 1762–2024.
637
Donoghue, Emma. “Author’s Note”. The Sealed Letter, Picador, 2011, pp. 465-74.
473

4 June 1859: Household Words merged with Charles Dickens's...

Writing climate item

4 June 1859

Household Words merged with Charles Dickens 's new periodical All the Year Round.
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. HarperCollins, 1990.
850

Texts

Dickens, Charles, and John Leech. A Christmas Carol. Chapman and Hall, 1843.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1859.
Dickens, Charles et al. “An Introduction”. Legends and Lyrics, Fifteenth, George Bell and Sons, 1874, p. xi - xxxi.
Dickens, Charles, editor. Bentley’s Miscellany. R. Bentley.
Dickens, Charles, and Hablot Knight Browne. Bleak House. Bradbury and Evans, 1853.
Dickens, Charles, and Hablot Knight Browne. David Copperfield. Bradbury and Evans, 1850.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Chapman and Hall, 1861, 3 vols.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Bradbury and Evans, 1854.
Dickens, Charles, editor. Household Words. Bradbury and Evans.
Lohrli, Anne, and Charles Dickens. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. University of Toronto Press, 1973.
Procter, Adelaide et al. Legends and Lyrics. New Edition, Bell and Daldy, 1866.
Procter, Adelaide, and Charles Dickens. Legends and Lyrics. 15th ed., George Bell and Sons, 1874.
Dickens, Charles, and Hablot Knight Browne. Little Dorrit. Bradbury and Evans, 1857.
Dickens, Charles, and George Cruikshank. Oliver Twist. R. Bentley, 1838, 3 vols.
Dickens, Charles, and Marcus Stone. Our Mutual Friend. Chapman and Hall, 1865, 2 vols.
Dickens, Charles, and George Cruikshank. Sketches by Boz. J. Macrone, 1836, 2 vols.
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Editors House, Madeline and Graham Storey, Pilgrim Edition, Clarendon Press, 2002, 12 vols.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Chapman and Hall, 1839.
Dickens, Charles, and Luke Fildes. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chapman and Hall, 1870.
Dickens, Charles et al. The Old Curiosity Shop. Chapman and Hall, 1841.
Dickens, Charles et al. The Pickwick Papers. Chapman and Hall, 1837.
Procter, Adelaide, and Charles Dickens. The Poems of Adelaide A. Procter. Complete Edition, James R. Osgood, 1873.