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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Textual Features Joan Aiken
Dickens , whose novels JA and her sister heard their mother reading aloud when they were children, is a shaping influence on these works: their teeming characters (with names like Miss Slighcarp and in later...
Friends, Associates William Harrison Ainsworth
At his home in Kensal Green he hosted many Victorian literary lions including Charles Dickens , William Makepeace Thackeray , Douglas Jerrold , William Wordsworth , and illustrator and collaborator George Cruikshank .
Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa, editors. The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World. Henry Holt and Company.
Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
The Concise Dictionary of National Biography: From Earliest Times to 1985. Oxford University Press.
Education Louisa May Alcott
LMA frequently attended lectures in Boston, and was present for the speeches of both William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens . Though she adored Dickens's writings, she judged him in person to be an...
Friends, Associates Hans Christian Andersen
HCA dedicated his book A Poet's Day Dreams to Charles Dickens , whom he visited in 1857. He also, while visiting England, stayed with William and Mary Howitt at The Elms, Lower Clapton. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Education Maya Angelou
Marguerite Johnson had already become a voracious reader, both of Black writers and of canonical dead white males. Shakespeare , she wrote later, was my first white love.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Heinemann New Windmill Series.
12
She also enjoyed and respected...
Intertextuality and Influence Maya Angelou
On the glamorous idea of touring with a show in Europe, MA writes that her images of London came from Dickens and Winston Churchill , her images of Paris from Guy de Maupassant , and...
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...
Education Daisy Ashford
DA 's mother, Emma , was an avid reader, and an unconventional amateur writer whose verses included brisk lines, slang, and knockabout humour.
Malcomson, R. M. Daisy Ashford: Her Life. Chatto & Windus.
53
She inscribed books that she gave away as gifts...
Textual Production Beryl Bainbridge
She later said the non-realism of this tale had dissatisfied her. She acknowledged the influence on it of Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson , and then judged that the best bits . . . have...
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
Occupation Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Pastimes at The Hoo included fox-hunting and an annual race-meeting, but also private theatricals (like those of Bulwer-Lytton at nearby Knebworth), for which BBBD both wrote and performed. She also joined with Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Anne Barker
MAB 's discussion of schools leads her into an account of a visit made by the Norwegian missionary, Bishop Schreuder , to a later Zulu chief, Cetshwayo , taken from a blue-book or government report...
Travel Arnold Bennett
AB landed in New York City to hit a version of the American lecture tour circuit; his publisher, George Doran , claimed that no other visitor from Europe had had such a welcome since Dickens .
Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett: A Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
186
Publishing Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE very nearly became forever a poet instead of a prose writer, when Dickens accepted a poem of hers entitled The Golden Bee (describing a real-life shipwreck), and printed it in All the Year Round.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, p. vi, 354 pp.
205
Reception Matilda Betham-Edwards
Geraldine Jewsbury , reviewing this book for the Athenæum early the next year, was not exactly encouraging. She guessed the author's gender correctly, and judged the novel a pale imitation of Charlotte Brontë 's Jane...

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.

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

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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.

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).

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.

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

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4 February 1832

Robert and William Chambers began publishing the weeklyChambers's EdinburghJournal.

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.

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.

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

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4 November 1836

Richard Bentley (1794-1871) signed an agreement with Dickens to edit his new monthly periodical, Bentley's Miscellany.

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

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3 May 1841

The London Library , established by Thomas Carlyle with Harriet Martineau , Dickens , Thackeray , and others, first opened its doors.

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

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March 1843

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

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1844

The Ragged School Union was founded and began opening schools in the slums of great cities.

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

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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.

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

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2 September 1852

The Manchester Free Library , the first major British public lending library, opened in Manchester.

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.

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.

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, 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. Bell and Daldy, 1866.
Procter, Adelaide, and Charles Dickens. Legends and Lyrics. 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.
Dickens, Charles, and Marcus Stone. Our Mutual Friend. Chapman and Hall, 1865.
Dickens, Charles, and George Cruikshank. Sketches by Boz. J. Macrone, 1836.
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Editors House, Madeline and Graham Storey, Clarendon Press, 2002.
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. James R. Osgood, 1873.