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.
His international travel and family ties to England's literary scene ensured him a wide social circle. He knew Charles Dickens
, John Forster
, and Frances Mary Peard
. While living in Florence, he became...
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...
Friends, Associates
Jane Welsh Carlyle
As his fame grew, Thomas was increasingly invited to the homes of London's political and intellectual elite, while Jane moved in her own social circle, which included Charles Dickens
, John Forster
, Giuseppe Mazzini
Friends, Associates
George Sand
Charles Dickens
met GS
; he declared in a letter that she had [n]othing of the blue-stocking about her.
Jordan, Ruth. George Sand: A Biographical Portrait. Taplinger.
HD
's obituary credited her with a large circle of friends, literary and otherwise, for whom she was always ready to perform helpful services such as finding a publisher for an author or a gallery...
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett.
26
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.
Charles Dickens
paid a visit to CC
at her house in Islington.
Kiddle, Margaret, and Sir Douglas Copland. Caroline Chisholm. Melbourne University Press.
140
Friends, Associates
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
To her many friends and visitors Lady Blessington soon added the exiled Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
, John Forster
, and in the early 1840s, Charles Dickens
.
Molloy, Joseph Fitzgerald. The Most Gorgeous Lady Blessington. Downey.
340-1, 376, 419-0
After Louis Napoleon's escape...
Friends, Associates
Hans Christian Andersen
HCA
dedicated his book A Poet's Day Dreams to Charles Dickens
, whom he visited in 1857. He also, while visiting England, stayed with William
and Mary Howitt
at The Elms, Lower Clapton. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Health
Augusta Ada Byron
Eventually Ada required heavy doses of laudanum to lessen the pain of her lengthy decline.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter. Macmillan.
353-5
On 19 August 1852 her friend Charles Dickens
complied with her wish that he should visit her deathbed to...
Health
Catherine Crowe
She had previously suffered from depression.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
149
Charles Dickens
reported the story that her attack of madness culminated in her walking down her own street in Edinburgh, not only stark mad but stark naked...
