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.
EF
's father, Benjamin Leopold Farjeon
, grew up in a poor, orthodox, Jewish household in the East End of London. At thirteen he was working as an errand-boy for a Christian newspaper, avidly...
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Education
Margaret Forster
MF
loved Carlisle Girls' High School in a way that made my love of all school from the beginning seem a feeble thing—although she quickly realised her deficiencies, like not having heard of Dickens
Textual Features
Margaret Forster
The novel, entitled Green Dusk for Dreams, drew on her own experience as an au pair girl in Bordeaux. At different times she called it Dickens
ian
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
Lucy Sussex names Fanny Fern
, George Augustus Sala
, and Charles Dickens
, as well as MF
's Australian contemporary Marcus Clarke
, as influences on her non-fiction writing. Sussex calls her tone vital...
Literary Setting
Julia Frankau
This melodramatic story pits evil woman against ideal woman, while its male characters are more mixed. JF
remains in control of her melodramatic plot and sometimes deliberately purple style: she succeeds in her business of...
Literary responses
Jane Gardam
JG
continued to attract prizes in her new genre. This work was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and in 1989 won the Baudelaire Prize in France.
British Council Film and Literature Department, in association with Book Trust. Contemporary Writers in the UK. http://www.contemporarywriters.com.
JG
's father's response to her Booker short-listing...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
Dickens
described EG
's The Heart of John Middleton (December 1850) as a story of extraordinary power, worked out with a vigour and truthfulness that very few people could reach.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
253
Miller, Anita, and Elizabeth Gaskell. “Preface and Chronology”. My Lady Ludlow, Academy Chicago, pp. 7-10.
9
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
The story's ending led to conflict with Dickens
, who apparently wanted to offer readers a more rationalist interpretation of the events narrated. When Gaskell demurred he pulled out all the stops: I have no...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Gaskell
A recurring theme in Cranford is the resistance to change of this insular group—who are convinced, for instance, that robberies must be perpetrated by strangers and that a Signor Brunoni, who turns out to...
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
She was paid £300 for the serial form of the book, £50 more than initially promised. This, her first serialised novel, produced fierce arguments with Dickens
over everything from the overall length to the conclusions...
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
In keeping with the policies of Household Words and All the Year Round, EG
's short fiction continued to appear there anonymously. She earned significant income from it, for Dickens
paid her at least...
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
Strained in her relationship with Dickens
, and despite not entirely easy relations with Thackeray
, EG
placed Curious if True in the first issue of Thackeray's new Cornhill Magazine in February 1860.
Some pressure...
Publishing
Elizabeth Gaskell
She again came into conflict with Dickens
, who against her wishes inserted the word dark in the title, stressing the melodrama rather than the mundane in the story of murder and paternal possessiveness in...
