Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Eliza Lynn
, later Linton, sold the family home at Gadshill to Charles Dickens
after her father died.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
58
Wealth and Poverty
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
She left a remarkably large estate for a Victorian woman writer. Despite the high style in which she lived, she was reportedly able from early in her career to save her literary earnings, since money...
Wealth and Poverty
Charlotte Smith
Poverty even forced her to sell her books: a thousand volumes, in English and French (partly, perhaps, to prevent their falling into her husband's hands). After his death she received some income from the estate...
Travel
Harriet Beecher Stowe
She was received by Dickens
, Lady Byron
, Anna Jameson
, the Lord Mayor of London, and various members of the nobility.
Hedrick, Joan. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. Oxford University Press.
233, 234
Adams, John R. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Twayne.
44-5
The working-class Scots poet Janet Hamilton
's tribute to...
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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Augusta Ward
The contemporary story features a self-educated working-class intellectual and freethinker whose characterisation draws on many strands of thought of the day. Drawn after the model of self-made men such as Daniel Macmillan
, William Lovett
She reflects on her experiences at Gad's Hill Place, the last home of her grandfather Charles Dickens
, which became her own immediate family's home for several years. The first-person essay contains MD's fragmented...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Frances Trollope
The subplot of Blue Belles features a current literary sensation, whose overnight success secures him in the course of a single month 376 invitations to dinner, 120 requests for personal inscriptions, 70 for autographs, and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Rebecca West
This series of essays grapples with the relation of the human will to religious and civil authority, as illustrated in various masterpieces of Western literature.
Poems also includes IB
's ten-stanza tribute to Charles Dickens
, whom she reveres as a second Shakespeare and as England's crowning sheaf . . . A priceless harvest claimed by God.
Blagden, Isa, and Alfred Austin. Poems. William Blackwood and Sons.
134, 136
Alluding...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Q. D. Leavis
Responding to recent charges that Brontë
's novel is stylistically flawed, incoherent in intention, and excessively melodramatic and violent, QDL
argues that the text, although not a seamless work of art, belongs, along with Tolstoy
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Vernon Lee
In her first essay, Lee offers a summary analysis of the English novelistic tradition. Judging them especially, though not entirely, on their treatments of morality, she evaluates writers including Jane Austen
, Maria Edgeworth
,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
's letters regularly indulge in analysis of books. She comments on works by both men and women, in English and French, and her opinions shift a good deal with age. She reacted with horror...
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...
1833: Edward Lloyd, trained as a stenographer at...
Writing climate item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.