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.
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, 1973.
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.
qtd. in
Lohrli, Anne, and Charles Dickens. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. University of Toronto Press, 1973.
243
One...
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...
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...
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...
Publishing
Eliza Cook
EC
contributed to other publications than her own, including Charles Dickens
's Daily News.
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Macmillan, 1995.
92
Textual Production
Wilkie Collins
WC
's sensation novel The Woman in White began its serialization in Dickens'sAll the Year Round, following on the same page the conclusion of Dickens's own A Tale of Two Cities in instalments.
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
26 November 2010
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, 1998.
14
many critics found its discussion of sexualityrevolting.
Gasson, Andrew. Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford University Press, 1998.
14
Publishing
Wilkie Collins
Perhaps anticipating its success, the novel was simultaneously serialised in both England (in Dickens'sAll the Year Round) and the US (in Harper's Weekly).
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Reception
Wilkie Collins
The popularity of The Woman in White prompted many stage adaptations. (Collins's version ran at the Olympic Theatre
, Wych Street, London, where his earlier plays The Lighthouse, The Red Vial, and...
Publishing
Caroline Clive
The name of the protagonist or hero is one CC
had herself used as a pseudonym. Her title-page has an epigraph from Sidney Smith
's letters: How little we know of what passes in each...
