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DICKENS, CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM (1812-187o)
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See also:DICKENS, See also: At the very moment when a consciousness of capacity was beginning to plump his youthful ambitions, the whole flattering See also:dream vanished and See also:left not a See also:rack behind. Happiness and Chatham had been left behind together, and Charles was about to enter a school far sterner and also far more instructive than that in Clover Lane. The family income had been first decreased and then mortgaged; the creditors of the " prodigal father " would not give him time; John Dickens was consigned to the See also:Marshalsea; Mrs Dickens started an " Educational See also:Establishment " as a forlorn See also:hope in Upper See also:Gower Street; and Charles, who had helped his mother with the children, blacked the boots, carried things to the pawnshop and done other See also:menial See also:work, was now sent out to See also:earn his own living as a young See also:hand in a blacking warehouse, at Old See also:Hungerford Stairs, on a salary of six shillings a See also:week. He tied, trimmed and labelled blacking pots for over a year, dining off a saveloy and a slice of See also:pudding, consorting with two very rough boys, Bob Fagin and Pol See also:Green, and sleeping in an attic in Little See also:College Street, Camden Town, in the house of Mrs Roylance (Pipchin), while on See also:Sunday he spent the See also:day with his parents in their comfortable See also:prison, where they had the services of a " marchioness " imported from the Chatham workhouse.
Already consumed by ambition, proud, sensitive and on his dignity to an extent not uncommon among boys of See also:talent, he See also:felt his position keenly, and in later years worked himself up into a See also:passion of self-pity in connexion with the " degradation " and "humiliation" of this See also:episode. The two years of childish hard-See also:ship which See also:ate like See also:iron into his soul were obviously of supreme importance in the growth of the novelist. Recollections of the streets and the prison and its purlieus supplied him with a See also:store of literary material upon which he See also:drew through all the years of his best activity. And the bitterness of such an experience was not prolonged sufficiently to become sour. From 1824 to 1826, having been rescued by a family See also:quarrel and by a windfall in the shape of a See also:legacy to his father, from the warehouse, he spent two179
years at an See also:academy known as See also:Wellington House, at the corner of See also:Granby Street and the See also:Hampstead Road (the lighter traits of which are reproduced in See also:Salem House), and was there known as a merry and rather mischievous boy. Fortunately he learned nothing there to See also:compromise the results of previous instruction. His father had now emerged from the Marshalsea and was seeking employment as a See also:parliamentary reporter. A See also: He remained in Mr See also:Blackmore's office from May 1827 to See also:November 1828, but he had lost none of his eager thirst for distinction, and spent all his spare time mastering See also:Gurney's See also:short-hand and See also:reading early and See also:late at the See also:British Museum. A more industrious apprentice in the lower grades of the literary profession has never been known, and the consciousness of opportunities used to the most splendid See also:advantage can hardly have been absent from the man who was shortly to take his place at the See also:head of it as if to the manner born. Lowten and Guppy, and Swiveller had been observed from this office lad's See also:stool; he was now greatly to widen his See also:area of study as a reporter in Doctors' See also:Commons and various See also:police courts, including See also:Bow Street, working all day at See also:law and much of the See also:night at shorthand. Some one asked John Dickens, during the first eager See also:period of curiosity as to the man behind " Pickwick," where his son Charles was educated. " Well really," said the prodigal father, " he may be said—haw—haw—to have educated himself." He was one of the most rapid and accurate reporters in London when, at nine-teen years of See also:age, in 1831, he realized his immediate ambition and "entered the See also:gallery" as parliamentary reporter to the True See also:Sun. Later he was reporter to the See also:Mirror of See also:Parliament and then to the See also:Morning See also:Chronicle. Several of his earliest letters are concerned with his exploits as a reporter, and allude to the experiences he had, travelling fifteen See also:miles an See also:hour and being upset in almost every description of known vehicle in various parts of See also:Britain between 1831 and 1836. The family was now living in Bentwick Street, See also:Manchester Square, but John Dickens was still no infrequent inmate of the sponging-houses. With all the accessories of these places of entertainment his son had grown to be excessively See also:familiar. See also:Writing about 1832 to his school friend Tom Mitton, Dickens tells him that his father has been arrested at the suit of a See also:wine See also:firm, and begs him go over to Cursitor Street and see what can be done. On another occasion of a paternal disappearance he observes: " I own that his See also:absence does not give me any great uneasiness, knowing how See also:apt he is to get out of the way when anything goes wrong." In yet another See also:letter he asks for a See also:loan of four shillings. In the meanwhile, however, he had commenced author in a more creative sense by penning some sketches of contemporary London See also:life, such as he had attempted in his school days in See also:imitation of the sketches published in the London and other magazines of that day. The first of these appeared in the See also:December number of the Old Monthly See also:Magazine for 1833. By the following See also:August, when the See also:signature " Boz " was first given, five of these sketches had appeared. By the end of 1834 we find him settled in rooms in Furnival's Inn, and a little later his salary on the Morning Chronicle was raised, owing to the intervention of one of its chiefs, See also:George See also:Hogarth, the father of (in addition to six sons) eight charming daughters, to one of whom, See also:Catherine, Charles was engaged to be married before the year was out. Clearly as his career now seemed designated, he was at this time or a little before it coquetting very seriously with the See also:stage: but circumstances were rapidly to determine another stage in his career. A year before See also:Queen See also:Victoria's See also:accession appeared in two volumes Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday See also:People. The See also:book came from a prentice hand, but like the little See also:tract on the Puritan abuse of the See also:Sabbath entitled " Sunday under three Heads " which appeared a few months later, it contains in germ all, or almost all, the future Dickens. Glance at the headings of the pages. Here we have the See also:Beadle and all connected with him, London streets, theatres, shows, the See also:pawn-See also:shop, Doctors' Commons, See also:Christmas, Newgate, coaching, the
See also:river. Here comes a satirical picture of parliament, fun made of cheap snobbery, a See also:rap on the knuckles of sectarianism. And what could be more prophetic than the See also:title of the opening chapter—Our See also:Parish? With the Parish—a large one indeed—Dickens to the end concerned himself; he began with a rapid survey of his whole See also: He seems to have fallen in love with the daughters collectively, and, judging by subsequent events, it has been suggested that perhaps he married the wrong one. His wife's See also:sister Mary was the See also:romance of his early married life, and another sister, Georgina, was the dearest friend of his last ten years.
A few days before the See also:marriage, just two months after the See also:appearance of the Sketches, the first See also:part of The See also:Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick See also:Club was announced. One of the See also:chief vogues of the day was the issue of humorous, sporting or anecdotal novels in parts, with plates, and some of the best talent of the day, represented by See also:Ainsworth, Bulwer, See also:Marryat, See also:Maxwell, See also:Egan, See also:Hook and See also:Surtees, had been pressed into this See also:kind of enterprise. The publishers of the day had not been slow to perceive Dickens's aptitude for this See also:species of " letterpress." A member of the firm of See also:Chapman & See also: No See also:modern book is so incalculable. We commence laughing heartily at Pickwick and his troupe. The laugh becomes kindlier. We are led on through a tangle of See also:adventure, never dreaming what is before us. The landscape changes: Pickwick becomes the See also:symbol of kind-heartedness, simplicity and See also:innocent levity. Suddenly in the See also:Fleet Prison a deeper See also:note is struck. The medley of human relation-See also:ships, the loneliness, the See also:mystery and sadness of human destinies are fathomed. The tragedy of human life is revealed to us amid its most farcical elements. The droll and laughable figure of the See also:hero is transfigured by the kindliness of human sympathy into a beneficent and bespectacled See also:angel in shorts and gaiters. By defying accepted rules, Dickens had transcended the limited See also:sphere hitherto allotted to his See also:art: he had produced a book to be enshrined henceforth in the inmost See also:hearts of all sorts and conditions of his countrymen, and had definitely enlarged the boundaries of English See also:humour and English fiction. As for Mr Pickwick, he is a See also:fairy like Puck or See also:Santa Claus, while his creator is " the last of the mythologists and perhaps the greatest." When The Pickwick Papers appeared in book See also:form at the See also:close of 1837 Dickens's popular reputation was made. From the appearance of Sam Weller in part v. the universal See also:hunger for the monthly parts had risen to a furore. The book was promptly translated into See also:French and See also:German. The author See also:bad received little assistance from See also:press or critics, he had no influential connexions, his class of subjects was such as to " expose him at the outset to the fatal objections of vulgarity," yet in less than six months from the appearance of the first number, as the Quarterly See also:Review almost ruefully admits, the whole reading world was talking about the Pickwickians. The names of Winkle, Wardle, Weller, Jingle, Snodgrass, Dodson & Fogg, were as familiar ashousehold words. Pickwick chintzes figured in the linendrapers' windows, and Pickwick cigars in every tobacconist's; Weller corduroys became the stock-in-See also:trade of every breeches-maker; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets, and the portrait of the author of See also:Pelham and See also:Crichton was scraped down to make way for that of the new popular favourite on the omnibuses. A new and See also:original See also:genius had suddenly sprung up, there was no denying it, even though, as the Quarterly concluded, " it required no See also:gift of prophecy to foretell his fate—he has risen like a See also:rocket and he will come down like the stick." It would have needed a very emphatic gift of prophecy indeed to foretell that Dickens's reputation would have gone on rising until at the See also:present day (after one See also:sharp fall, which reached an extreme about 1887) it stands higher than it has ever stood before. Dickens's See also:assumption of the literary See also:purple was as amazing as anything else about him. Accepting the See also:homage of the luminaries of the literary, See also:artistic and polite worlds as if it had been his natural due, he arranges for the See also:settlement of his family, decrees, like another See also:Edmund See also:Kean, that his son is to go to See also:Eton, carries on the most complicated negotiations with his publishers and editors, presides and orates with incomparable force at innumerable banquets, public and private, arranges elaborate villegiatures in the country, at the seaside, in See also:France or in See also:Italy, arbitrates in public on every topic, See also:political, ethical, artistic, social or literary, entertains and legislates for an increasingly large domestic circle, both juvenile and adult, rules himself and his time-table with a See also:rod of iron. In his letter-writing alone, Dickens did a life's literary work. Nowadays no one thinks of writing such letters; that is to say, letters of such length and detail, for the quality is Dickens's own. He evidently enjoyed this use of the See also:pen. See also:Page after page of See also:Forster's Life (750 pages in the Letters edited by his daughter and sister-in-law) is occupied with transcription from private See also:correspondence, and never a See also:line of this but is thoroughly worthy of See also:print and preservation. If he makes a tour in any part of the British Isles, he writes a full description of all he See also:sees, of everything that happens, and writes it with such gusto, such mirth, such strokes of See also:fine picturing, as appear in no other private letters ever given to the public. Naturally buoyant in all circumstances, a See also:holiday gave him the exhilaration of a school-boy. See how he writes from See also:Cornwall, when on a trip with two or three See also:friends, in 1843. "Heavens! if you could have seen the necks of bottles, distracting in their immense variety of shape, peering out of the See also:carriage pockets ! If you could have witnessed the deep devotion of the See also:post-boys, the maniac See also:glee of the waiters ! If you could have followed us into the earthy old churches we visited, and into the See also:strange caverns on the gloomy seashore, and down into the depths of mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights, where the unspeakably green See also:water was roaring, I don't know how many See also:hundred feet below. . . . I never laughed in my life as I did on this See also:journey. It would have done you See also:good to hear me. I was choking and gasping and bursting the buckles off the back of my stock, all the way. And See also:Stanfield "—the painter—" got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were obliged to See also:beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him." The animation of Dickens's look would attract the See also:attention of any one, anywhere. His figure was not that of an See also:Adonis, but his brightness made him the centre and See also:pivot of every society he was in. The keenness and vivacity of his See also:eye combined with his inordinate appetite for life to give the unique quality to all that he wrote. His See also:instrument is that of the See also:direct, sinewy English of See also:Smollett, combined with much of the humorous See also:grace of Goldsmith (his two favourite authors), but modernized to a certain extent under the See also:influence of See also:Washington See also:Irving, See also:Sydney See also: He shared many of their " great useless virtues," among which generosity ranks before See also:justice, and sympathy before truth, even though, true to his middle-class vein, he exalts piety, chastity and honesty in a manner somewhat See also:alien to the mind of the See also:low-bred man. This is what makes Dickens such a demigod and his public success such a marvel, and this also is why any exclusively literary See also:criticism of his work is See also:bound to be so inadequate. It should also help us to make the necessary allowances for the man. Dickens, even the Dickens of See also:legend that we know, is far from perfect. The Dickens of reality to which Time may furnish a nearer approximation is far less perfect. But when we consider the corroding influence of adulation, and the See also:intoxication of unbridled success, we cannot but wonder at the relatively high level of moderation and self-See also:control that Dickens almost invariably observed. Mr G. K. See also:Chesterton remarks suggestively that Dickens had all his life the faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night. He is overwrought by happiness to the See also:verge of exasperation, and yet as a See also:matter of fact he does keep on the right See also:side of the breaking point. The specific and curative in his See also:case was the work in which he took such anxioug See also:pride, and such unmitigated delight. He revelled in punctual and See also:regular work; at his See also:desk he was often in the highest See also:spirits. Behold how he pictured himself, one day at See also:Broadstairs, where he was writing Chuzzlewit. " In a See also:bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'See also:clock to one, a See also:gentleman with rather See also:long See also:hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins, as if he thought he was very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing-See also:machine, and may be seen, a kind of See also:salmon-See also:colour See also:porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that, he may be viewed in another bay-window on the' ground-See also:floor eating a strong lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back on the See also:sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him, unless they know he is disposed to be talked to, and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as See also: Before November 1837 had ended, Charles Dickens entered on an engagement to write a successor to Pickwick on similar lines of publication. Oliver Twist was then in See also:mid-career; a Life of See also:Grimaldi and Barnaby Rudge were already covenanted for. Dickens forged ahead with the new See also:tale of See also:Nicholas Nickleby and was justified by the results, for its See also:sale far surpassed even that of Pickwick. As a conception it is one of his weakest. An unmistakably 18th-See also:century See also:character pervades it. Some of the vignettes are among the most piquant and besetting ever written. Large parts of it are totally unobserved conventional See also:melodrama; but the Portsmouth See also:Theatre and Dotheboys Hall and Mrs Nickleby (based to some extent, it is thought, upon See also:Miss See also:Bates in Emma, but also upon the author's Mamma) live for ever as Dickens conceived them in the pages of Nicholas Nickleby. Having got rid of Nicholas Nickleby and resigned his editor-ship of See also:Bentley's See also:Miscellany, in which Oliver Twist originally appeared, Dickens conceived the idea of a weekly periodical to be issued as See also:Master See also:Humphrey's Clock, to comprise short stories, essays and See also:miscellaneous papers, after the See also:model of See also:Addison's Spectator. To make the weekly See also:numbers " go," he introduced Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller and his father in friendly intercourse. But the public requisitioned " a story," and in No. 4 he had to See also:brace himself up to give them one. Thus was commenced The Old Curiosity Shop, which was continued with slight interruptions, and followed by Barnaby Rudge. For the first time we find Dickens obsessed by a highly complicated See also:plot. The tonality achieved in The Old Curiosity Shop surpassed anything he had attempted in this difficult vein, while the See also:rich humour of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, and the vivid See also:portraiture of the wandering Bohemians, attain the very highest level of Dickensian drollery; but in the lamentable tale of Little Nell (though See also:Landor and Jeffrey thought the character-See also:drawing of this See also:infant comparable with that of Cordelia), it is generally admitted that he committed an indecent See also:assault upon the emotions by exhibiting a veritable See also:monster of piety and long-suffering in a See also:child of See also:tender years. In Barnaby Rudge he was manifestly affected by the influence of Scott, whose achievements he always regarded with a touching veneration. The plot, again, is of the utmost complexity, and See also:Edgar See also:Allan See also:Poe (who predicted the conclusion) must be one of the few persons who ever really mastered it. But few of Dickens's books are written in a more admirable style.
Master Humphrey's Clock concluded, Dickens started in 1842 on his first visit to America—an episode hitherto without parallel in English literary See also:history, for he was received everywhere with popular See also:acclamation as the representative of a See also:grand See also:triumph of the English language and See also:imagination, without regard to distinctions of See also:nationality. He offended the See also:American public grievously by a few words of See also:frank description and a few quotations of the See also:advertisement columns of American papers illustrating the essential barbarity of the old slave See also:system (American Notes). Dickens was soon pining for home—no English writer is more essentially and insularly English in See also:inspiration and aspiration than he is. He still brooded over the perverseness of See also:America on the See also:copyright question, and in his next book he took the opportunity of uttering a few of his impressions about the objectionable sides of American See also:democracy, the result being that " all See also:Yankee-doodle-dom blazed up like one universal soda See also:bottle," as See also:Carlyle said. See also: After these two masterpieces and the three wonderful books with which he made his debut, we are inclined to See also:rank Chuzzlewit. Nothing in Dickens is more admirably seen and presented than Todgers's, a See also:bit of London particular cut out with a See also:knife. Mr Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp, Betsy Prig and " Mrs See also:Harris " have passed into the See also:national language and life. The See also:coach journey, the windy autumn night, the stealthy trail of See also:Jonas, the under-See also:tone of tragedy in the Charity and See also:Mercy and Chuffey episodes suggest a blending of imaginative See also:vision and See also:physical penetration hardly seen elsewhere. Two things are specially notable about this novel—the exceptional care taken over it (as shown by the interlineations in the MS.) and the caprice or nonchalance of the purchasing public, its sales being far lower than those of any of its monthly predecessors. At the dose of 1843, to pay outstanding debts of his now lavish housekeeping, he wrote that See also:pioneer of Christmas numbers, that national benefit as See also:Thackeray called it, A Christmas See also:Carol. It failed to realize his pecuniary anticipations, and Dickens resolved upon a drastic policy of See also:retrenchment and reform. He would See also:save expense by living abroad and would punish his publishers by withdrawing his See also:custom from them, at least for a time. Like everything else upon which he ever determined, this See also:resolution was carried out with the greatest possible precision and despatch. In See also:June 1844 he set out for See also:Marseilles with his now rapidly increasing family (the journey cost him £zoo). In a See also:villa on the outskirts of See also:Genoa he wrote The Chimes, which, during a brief excursion to London before Christmas, he read to a select circle of friends (the germ of his subsequent lecture-audiences), including Forster, Carlyle, Stanfield, See also:Dyce, See also:Maclise and See also:Jerrold. He was again in London in 1845, enjoying his favourite diversion of private theatricals; and in See also:January 1846 he experimented briefly as the editor of a London morning paper—the Daily See also:News. By early See also:spring he was back at See also:Lausanne, writing his customary vivid letters to his friends, craving as usual for London streets, commencing Dombey and Son, and walking his fourteen miles daily. The success of Dombey and Son completely rehabilitated the master's finances, enabled him to return to See also:England, send his son to Eton and to begin to save See also:money. Artistically it is less satisfactory; it contains some of Dickens's See also:prime curios, such as Cuttle, Bunsby, Toots, Blimber, Pipchin, Mrs MacStinger and young Biler; it contains also that master-piece of sentimentality which trembles upon the borderland of the See also:sublime and the ridiculous, the See also:death of See also:Paul Dombey (" that sweet Paul," as Jeffrey, the " critic See also:laureate," called him), and some grievous and unquestionable blemishes. As a narrative, moreover, it tails off into a highly complicated and exacting plot. It was followed by a long See also:rest at Broadstairs before Dickens returned to the native See also:home of his genius, and early in 1849 " began to prepare for David Copperfield."
" Of all my books," Dickens wrote, " I like this the best; like many fond parents I have my favourite child, and his name is David Copperfield." In some respects it stands to Dickens in something of the same relation in which the contemporary Pendennis stands to Thackeray. As in that book, too, the earlier portions are the best. They gained in intensity by the auto-See also:biographical form into which they are thrown; as Thackeray observed, there was no writing against such power. The tragedy of Emily and the character of See also:Rosa Dartle are stagey and unreal; Uriah Heep is bad art; See also:Agnes, again, is far less convincing as a See also:consolation than Dickens would have us believe; but these are more than compensated by the wonderful realization of early boyhood in the book, by the picture of Mr Creakle's school, the Peggottys, the inimitable Mr Micawber, Betsy Trot-See also:wood and that See also:monument of selfish misery, Mrs Gummidge.
At the end of See also: In spite of the exquisite See also:comedy of the master of the Marshalsea and the final tragedy of the central figure, Little Dorrit is sadly deficient in the old vitality, the humour is often a See also:mock reality, and the repetition of comic catch-words and overstrung similes and metaphors is such as to affect the reader with nervous irritation. The plot and characters ruin each other in this amorphous See also:production. The Tale of Two Cities, commenced in All the Year See also:Round (the successor of Household Words) in 1859, is much better: the See also:main characters are powerful, the story genuinely tragic, and the See also:atmosphere lurid; but enormous labour was everywhere expended upon the construction of stylistic See also:ornament. The Tale of Two Cities was followed by two finer efforts at atmospheric delineation, the best things he ever did of this kind: Great Expectations (1861), over which there broods the mournful impression of the foggy marshes of the Lower See also:Thames; and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865), in which the See also:ooze and mud and slime of Rotherhithe, its boatmen and loafers, are made to pervade the whole book with cumulative effect. The general effect produced by the stories is, however, very different. In the first case, the foreground was supplied by autobiographical material of the most vivid See also:interest, and the lucidity of the creative impulse impelled ,him to write upon this occasion with the old simplicity, though with an added power. Nothing therefore, in the whole range of Dickens surpassed the early chapters of Great Expectations in perfection of technique or in mastery of all the resources of the novelist's art. To have created See also:Abel Magwitch alone is to be a See also:god indeed, says Mr See also:Swinburne, among the creators of death-less men. Pumblechook is actually better and droller and truer to imaginative life than Pecksniff; Joe Gargery is worthy to have been praised and loved at once by See also:Fielding and by See also:Sterne: Mr Jaggers and his clients, Mr Wemmick and his See also:parent and his See also:bride, are such figures as See also:Shakespeare, when dropping out of See also:poetry, might have created, if his See also:lot had been See also:cast in a later century. " Can as much be said," Mr Swinburne boldly asks, " for the creatures of any other man or god ? " In November 1867 Dickens made a second expedition to America, leaving all the writing that he was ever to complete be-See also:hind him. He was to make a round sum of money, enough to See also:free him from all embarrassments, by a long See also:series of exhausting readings, commencing at the Tremont See also:Temple, See also:Boston, on the znd of December. The strain of Dickens's See also:ordinary life was so tense and so continuous that it is, perhaps, rash to assume that he See also:broke down eventually under this particular stress; for other reasons, however, his persistence in these readings, subsequent to his return, was strongly deprecated by his literary friends, led by the arbitrary and relentless Forster. It is a long testimony to Dickens's self-See also:restraint, even in his most capricious and despotic moments, that he never broke the See also:cord of See also:obligation which bound him to his literary See also:mentor, though sparring matches between them were latterly of frequent occurrence. His farewell reading was given on the 15th of March 187o, at St See also: One of the most appealing memorials was the drawing by his " new illustrator " See also:Luke See also:Fildes in the Graphic of " The Empty Chair; Gad's Hill: ninth of June, 1870." " Statesmen, men of See also:science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race, might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Charles Dickens " (The Times). In his will he enjoined his friends to erect no monument in his See also:honour, and directed his name and See also:dates only to be inscribed on his See also:tomb, adding this proud See also:provision, " I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my published See also:works." Dickens had no artistic ideals worth speaking about. The sympathy of his readers was the one thing he cared about and, like See also:Cobbett, he went straight for it through the See also:avenue of the emotions. In See also:personality, intensity and range of creative genius he can hardly be said to have any modern rival. His creations live, move and have their being about us constantly, like those of See also:Homer, See also:Virgil, See also:Chaucer, See also:Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, See also:Banyan, See also:Moliere and See also:Sir See also:Walter Scott. As to the books them-selves, the backgrounds on which these mighty figures are projected, they are manifestly too vast, too chaotic and too unequal ever to become See also:classics. Like most of the novels constructed upon the unreformed model of Smollett and Fielding, those of Dickens are enormous stock-pots into which the author casts every kind of autobiographical experience, emotion, pleasantry, See also:anecdote, adage or See also:apophthegm. The See also:fusion is necessarily very incomplete and the hotch-potch is bound to fall to pieces with time. Dickens's plots, it must be admitted, are strangely unintelligible, the repetitions and stylistic decorations of his work exceed all See also:bounds, the form is unmanageable and insignificant. The diffuseness of the English novel, in short, and its extravagant didacticism cannot fail to be most prejudicial to its perpetuation. In these circumstances there is very little fiction that will stand concentration and condensation so well as that of Dickens. For these reasons among others our interest in Dickens's novels as integers has diminished and is diminishing. But, on the other hand, our interest and pride in him as a man and as a representative author of his age and nation has been steadily augmented and is still mounting. Much of the old criticism of his work, that it was not up to a sufficiently high level of art, scholarship or gentility, that as an author he is given to See also:caricature, redundancy and a shameless subservience to popular caprice, must now be discarded as irrelevant. As regards formal excellence it is See also:plain that Dickens labours under the See also:double disadvantage of writing in the least disciplined of all literary genres in the most lawless literary milieu of the modern world, that of Victorian England. In spite of these defects, which are those of masters such as Rabelais, See also:Hugo and See also:Tolstoy, the work of Dickens is more and more instinctively felt to be true, original and ennobling. It is already beginning to undergo a See also:process of automatic sifting, segregation and See also:crystallization, at the conclusion of which it will probably occupy a larger segment in the literary consciousness of the English-spoken race Maclise which served as See also:frontispiece to Nicholas Nickleby to the See also:sketch of him as Bobadil by C. R. See also:Leslie, the See also:Drummond and Ary See also:Scheffer portraits of middle age and the See also:haggard and See also:drawn representations of him from photographs after his shattering experiences as a public entertainer from 1856 (the year of his separation from his wife) onwards, are reproduced in Kitton, in Forster and See also:Gissing and in the other See also:biographies. Sketches are also given in most of the books of his successive dwelling places at Ordnance Terrace and 18 St Mary's Place, Chatham; Bayham Street, Camden Town; 15 Furnival's Inn; 48 Doughty Street; 1 See also:Devonshire Terrace, See also:Regent's Park; See also:Tavistock House, Tavistock Square; and Gad's Hill Place. The See also:manuscripts of all the novels, with the exception of the Tale of Two Cities and Edwin Drood, were given to Forster, and are now preserved in the Dyce and Forster Museum at See also:South See also:Kensington. The work of Dickens was a See also:prize for which publishers naturally contended both before and after his death. The first collective edition of his works was begun in April 1847, and their number is now very great. The most complete is still that of Messrs Chapman & Hall, the original publishers of Pickwick; others of See also:special interest are the Harrap edition, originally edited by F. G. Kitton; See also:Macmillan's edition with original illustrations and introduction by Charles Dickens the younger; and the edition in the World's Classics with introductions by G. K. Chesterton. Of the See also:translations the best known is that done into French by See also:Lorain, Pichot and others, with B. H. Gausseron's excellent Pages Choisies (1903). than ever before. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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