Garlick, Barbara. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Editor Mitchell, Sally, Garland Publishing, Inc., p. 837.
837
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.
Connections
| Connections | Author name Sort ascending | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Alice Walker | The opening words of the title are quoted from June Jordan
. The opening words of the text, more surprisingly, come from Dickens
: It is the worst of times. It is the best of... |
| Literary responses | Lucy Walford | The journal likened the development of character in Walford's Mr Druitt to that of Dickens
's John Jarndyce, in Bleak House. It also thought the ending to be one of LW
's best: she... |
| Reception | Lucy Walford | |
| Literary responses | Ethel Lilian Voynich | Overall, however, The Gadfly was a success to a degree that not one of ELV
's subsequent novels could achieve. |
| Literary responses | Queen Victoria | Despite her book's popularity, when Victoria entered the arena of public writing, some Victorians criticized her prose style. After receiving copies of Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, sent by... |
| politics | Queen Victoria | Charles Dickens
, while recognizing the value that appeal to the crown could have for an author's socio-economic position and prestige, also felt that his power to create representations which would reflect and shape the... |
| Textual Production | Queen Victoria | Initially, Victoria was unreceptive to the idea of widespread publication of her journal extracts, arguing (according to Helps in his Editor's Preface) that she had no skill whatever in authorship; that these were, for the... |
| Education | Alison Uttley | Alice Jane Taylor (later AU
) was a strong-willed child who set her own agenda. She later remembered a trial of wills, at the age of two, with her godmother, which ended not in her... |
| Textual Features | Charlotte Maria Tucker | This, one of her most lively and engaging children's books, features a main character named Ratto, who wanders through the world from London to Russia, eventually joining up with a rat-hero named Whiskerandos. This... |
| Literary responses | Charlotte Maria Tucker | Critic J. S. Bratton
calls this book the kind of perversion of well-loved stories which Dickens
and others found so reprehensible. She nevertheless maintains that Tucker tells the tales with some zest. Bratton, Jacqueline S. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction. Croom Helm. 75 |
| 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. |
| Occupation | Frances Eleanor Trollope | Their time performing in The Frozen Deep marks the beginning of the relationship between the Ternans and Dickens
. Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. HarperCollins. 775, 786-8 |
| Occupation | Frances Eleanor Trollope | Dickens
, by now a long-standing friend of the Ternans, introduced FET
to the Trollopes; she had admired Theodosia Trollope, Bice's mother, for her talents in music and poetry. She was also extremely fond Stebbins, Lucy Poate, and Richard Poate Stebbins. The Trollopes. The Chronicle of a Writing Family. Columbia University Press. 234 |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Frances Eleanor Trollope | Dickens
, on the other hand, though fond of both the Trollopes and the Ternans, apparently confided that he did not in the least care for Fanny, whom he judged, with evident misgivings, to be... |
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.
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.
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
.
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.
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.
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.
30 April 1881: Charles Dickens's son, who shared his name,...
Writing climate item
30 April 1881
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.
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).
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.
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
.
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
.
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.
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.
Texts
No bibliographical results available.