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 Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Education Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth read early and voraciously, polishing off Anna Maria Hall 's three-volume Marian when she was only seven. By nine she was reading Scott and Dickens . One of the family servants introduced her...
Education Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
She read voraciously, preferring writers with the geographical rootedness which she herself lacked: George Eliot , Thomas Hardy , Charles Dickens , and from beyond the English tradition Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Henry James
Education Isabella Banks
Her education was supplemented both by a good home library and by her parents' wide cultural circle. She led a lively social life in Manchester, attending Anti-Corn Law League bazaars, and soirées at the Manchester Athenæum
Education Berta Ruck
BR 's early education took place at home, where she learned to read at the age of three and a half, and was encouraged in her passion for reading.
Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson.
35-40
Her father saw to it...
Education Susan Hill
Although not a Catholic, she went to a convent school in Scarborough, where she set out to enlighten her school friends (who thought babies were grown from a packet in hospital, like plants from...
Education Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary's mother was probably her most important teacher. She told her stories which, no matter how outlandish and fantastic, the very young Rosemary accepted as literal truth; she later imparted all kinds of varied information...
Education Marie Belloc Lowndes
One of the earliest books that Marie could remember was Pierre et Pierrette, a celebrated little text written by her grandmother Belloc to improve the education of French village children. She grew up conscious...
Education Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM ) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Education Alice Munro
AM has mentioned two texts in particular as early influences: Andersen 's The Little Mermaid (whose ending upset her so much that she made up an alternative happy ending) and Dickens 's A Child's History...
Education Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW 's family encouraged her in the regular pursuits of a young, middle-class Victorian woman. From her father she inherited an enthusiasm for poetry—she especially liked Shakespeare , Coleridge , and Whitman —and she read...
Education Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
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
Education Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen.
61, 65
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...
Education Anita Brookner
AB 's father urged her to read Dickens , for the purpose of understanding what the English were like, and also of understanding the unfairness of things.
Skinner, John. The Fictions of Anita Brookner: Illusions of Romance. Macmillan.
5
She began reading Dickens at the age...

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...

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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...

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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...

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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,...

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30 April 1881

Charles Dickens 's son , who shared his name, revived the periodicalHousehold Words.

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,...

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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...

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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...

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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.