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 Excerpt
Author summary Wilkie Collins
Best remembered for his sensational fiction of the 1860s, WC was, in the course of his forty-year writing career, the author of many ingeniously-plotted novels, as well as a writer of plays (some in collaboration...
Friends, Associates Wilkie Collins
WC first met Charles Dickens in 1851 when he acted in one of Dickens's amateur theatricals. It was an important relationship for Collins, and the two collaborated on a number of works. The Woman in...
Literary responses Wilkie Collins
Critical reception was mixed. While Dickens wrote that the story contains admirable writing,
Gasson, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press.
14
many critics found its discussion of sexualityrevolting.
Gasson, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press.
14
Publishing Eliza Cook
EC contributed to other publications than her own, including Charles Dickens 's Daily News.
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Macmillan.
92
Textual Production Lettice Cooper
LC issued further biographies of eminent Victorians designed for young people: The Young Florence Nightingale, 1960, The Young Victoria, 1961, The Young Edgar Allan Poe, 1964, and A Hand Upon the Time...
Family and Intimate relationships Marie Corelli
MC 's stepfather—and possible biological father or grandfather—Charles MacKay (born 1814), was a writer and editor. Among the periodicals he worked for were the Morning Chronicle, alongside Charles Dickens ; the Daily Telegraph...
Education Marie Corelli
Looking back on her early education, MC wrote I managed to develop into a curiously determined independent little personality, with ideas and opinions more suited to some clever young man. . . . I instinctively...
Textual Production Marie Corelli
She was the first literary figure to speak to this society in Edinburgh since Charles Dickens . The lecture was published by the Society the following year, and later appeared as an essay in a...
Friends, Associates Louisa Stuart Costello
LSC made many friends in England, notably including the baronet and politician Sir Francis Burdett , his wife Lady Burdett (born Sophia Coutts, member of a famous banking family), and their youngest daughter, who later...
Textual Features Dinah Mulock Craik
This original fairy tale features the Prince Dolor, who is crippled as an infant, deprived of his rule by a Prince Regent uncle, and brought up in miserable conditions. A fairy godmother gives him a...
Reception Dinah Mulock Craik
DMC 's work reached immense numbers of people. It was a staple of Mudie 's and other circulating libraries . Her work was swiftly published in the US, and she had numerous titles (novels and...
Publishing Georgiana Craik
GC contributed three stories to Dickens 's Household Words in 1852 and 1853, and Anne Lohrli 's index to the journal indicates that she also submitted work to All the Year Round.
Lohrli, Anne, and Charles Dickens. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. University of Toronto Press.
243
Lohrli...
Intertextuality and Influence Georgiana Craik
In correspondence Dickens noted that GC 's imitation of me is too glaring—I never saw anything so curious. She takes the very words in which Esther [Summerson] speaks, without seeming to know it.
Lohrli, Anne, and Charles Dickens. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. University of Toronto Press.
243
One...
Friends, Associates Catherine Crowe
CC had already become a friend of Sydney Smith and his family. In Edinburgh she became friendly with members of various intellectual circles, including astronomer John Pringle Nichol , chemist Samuel Brown , artist David Scott
Health Catherine Crowe
She had previously suffered from depression.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
149
Charles Dickens reported the story that her attack of madness culminated in her walking down her own street in Edinburgh, not only stark mad but stark naked...

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