Charles Dickens

-
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
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 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 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 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 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 Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
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 Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
61, 65
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...
Education Susan Hill
Although not a Catholic, she went to a convent school in Scarborough, where she set out to enlighten her school friends (who thought babies were grown from a packet in hospital, like plants from...
Education Margaret Forster
MF loved Carlisle Girls' High School in a way that made my love of all school from the beginning seem a feeble thing—although she quickly realised her deficiencies, like not having heard of Dickens
Education Doris Lessing
Before attending school and after she left, Doris educated herself by reading. Her parents possessed copies of the classics, like Scott , Dickens , and Kipling . She read widely in the nineteenth century—her favourites...
Education Emma Marshall
At a very early age Emma Martin could recite See'st thou my home is where yon woods are waving by Felicia Hemans .
qtd. in
Marshall, Beatrice. Emma Marshall. Seeley, 1900.
8
After leaving school she continued to study music with Dr Zacariah or Zechariah Buck
Education Berta Ruck
BR 's early education took place at home, where she learned to read at the age of three and a half, and was encouraged in her passion for reading.
Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson, 1935.
35-40
Her father saw to it...
Education Anita Brookner
AB 's father urged her to read Dickens , for the purpose of understanding what the English were like, and also of understanding the unfairness of things.
qtd. in
Skinner, John. The Fictions of Anita Brookner: Illusions of Romance. Macmillan, 1992.
5
She began reading Dickens at the age...

Timeline

2 July 1859: William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans...

Writing climate item

2 July 1859

William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans began publishing a sixpenny periodical entitled Once a Week.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
79, 479-80
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

7 October 1865: Governor Edward Eyre ruthlessly suppressed...

National or international item

7 October 1865

Governor Edward Eyre ruthlessly suppressed a rebellion which began at Morant Bay in Jamaica.
Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
264-5

August 1868: A week after the death of US Jewish writer...

Writing climate item

August 1868

A week after the death of US Jewish writer Adah Isaacs Menken (famous in London as a near-naked daredevil rider on stage in Mazeppa; or, the Wild Horse of Tartary), her poetry volume Infelicia...

By 17 April 1869: Rosa Mulholland's Hester's History, her first...

Women writers item

By 17 April 1869

Rosa Mulholland 's Hester's History, her first novel published under her own name, was both influenced and in due course appreciated by Charles Dickens .
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2164 (1869): 533
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.

1872: The Dolly Varden hat, named for the coquette...

Building item

1872

The Dolly Varden hat, named for the coquette of Dickens 's Barnaby Rudge, made its first appearance.
Adburgham, Alison. A Punch History of Manners and Modes 1841-1940. Hutchinson, 1961.
97

1872-1874: John Forster, who is recognized as the first...

Writing climate item

1872-1874

John Forster , who is recognized as the first professional biographer of the nineteenth century, published his biography of Dickens, in three volumes.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2351 (1872): 625
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...

Writing climate item

April 1879

James Murray —editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything. Oxford University Press, 2003.
93, 107, 109

30 April 1881: Charles Dickens's son, who shared his name,...

Writing climate item

30 April 1881

Charles Dickens 's son , who shared his name, revived the periodical Household Words.
Lohrli, Anne, and Charles Dickens. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. University of Toronto Press, 1973.
50

1891: Mary Dickens (grand-daughter of Charles Dickens)...

Women writers item

1891

Mary Dickens (grand-daughter of Charles Dickens ) published her first novel, Cross Currents, a story of the conflict between love and career in a talented actress.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
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.

July1905: Household Words, founded by Charles Dickens,...

Writing climate item

July1905

Household Words, founded by Charles Dickens , ceased publication with volume 49 of its continuation dating from 13 April 1881. In its current form it was once more a monthly (after a period as a weekly).
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

5 January 1907: Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (who died...

Building item

5 January 1907

Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (who died of bronchitis on 30 December 1906) became the last person laid to rest at Westminster Abbey.
“Women’s History Timeline”. BBC: Radio 4: Woman’s Hour.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1920: The number of Miners' Institutes (which included...

Writing climate item

1920

The number of Miners' Institutes (which included Miners' Libraries ) increased following the decision regularly to supplement the levy financing them from the national Miners' Welfare Fund .
Collini, Stefan. “The Cookson Story”. London Review of Books, 13 Dec. 2001, pp. 33-5.
34

February 1959: Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'be, a musical...

Building item

February 1959

Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'be, a musical about gangsters, molls, and tarts, was created by formerly criminal writer Frank Norman , composer Lionel Bart , and the company at Joan Littlewood 's Theatre Royal, Stratford East .
“Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be”. The Guide to Musical Theatre.

1996: US punk writer Kathy Acker published Pussy,...

Writing climate item

1996

US punk writer Kathy Acker published Pussy, King of the Pirates, a feminist-pornographic reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson 's Treasure Island in which the treasure-seekers are a band of women pirates.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

14 July 2006: The Bow Street Magistrates Court, one of...

Building item

14 July 2006

The Bow Street Magistrates Court , one of London's most famous courts, closed after dispensing justice for 267 years.
“Bow Street Court Closes Its Doors”. BBC News.
“Infamous Names in Bow Street’s Past”. The Mail on Sunday.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.