Charles Dickens Project

Introduction

Charles Dickens was a prolific 19th-century author who is best known for his novels such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, but he was also a sharp social commentator who used his works to express his frustration with the societal and political situation in England at the time.

Life

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England to a middle class family. Shortly after he was born, the Dickens family moves to Chatham, London. His father was a clerk, but the family's financial status was never stable. In 1824 his father was put in prison, and Dickens left school to work in a factory. His schooling ended there, at age 15. In his professional life, Dickens was a clerk, a court reporter, a newspaper reporter, an editor, and a creative writer. However, he could not shake his middle class roots, and when he proposed to Maria Beadnell, she rejected him because he was not wealthy enough. Despite this disappointment, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836. Catherine was the daughter of a Scottish journalist, and she and Dickens had nine children. After his marriage, Dickens became the editor of Bentley's Miscellany, and began to contribute serialized works to Household Words and All the Year Round, which he later edited. Always a liberal who criticized the British Parliament, Dickens writings' took a dark turn in the 1850s. His works became social and political criticism, that, while well-written and riddled with symbols and sophisticated style, were dark and satirical. In 1858 his wife Catherine moved out, causing a small scandal. The family tried to keep it quiet, but it was found out that the couple had been having problems since 1838. Dickens found a new career as a paid public reader after his separation from his wife. He loved the attention, but in the 1860s, his strenuous touring schedule became too much, and his health began to fail. On June 9, 1870 he suddenly died in Gad's Hill, Kent and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Major Works

• The Pickwick Papers (1836-37)
• Adventures of Oliver Twist, or The parish boy's progress (1837-39)
• Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39)
• The old curiosity shop (1840-41)
• A Christmas carol (1843)
• The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44)
• Dombey and son (1846-48)
• David Copperfield (1849-50)
• Bleak house (1852-53)
• Hard times: for these times (1854)
• Little dorrit (1855-57)
• A Tale of two cities (1859)
• Great expectations (1860-61)

Annotated Bibliography

• Bigelow, Gordon, 1963-. 2000. Market indicators: Banking and domesticity in dickens's bleak house. ELH 67, (2): 589-615.

In "Market Indicators" (2000), Gordon Bigelow argues that the metaphors Charles Dickens' Bleak House refer to "market circulation" and economics. He uses the metaphors of Chancery as the market and as famine, and domesticity as finance. He concludes that Dickens' position is relatively close to that of Bagehot, the editor of The Economist in 1858. The purpose is to show an underlying meaning often skimmed over in a work of Dickens.

• Federico, Annette, 1960-. 2004. David copperfield and the pursuit of happiness. Victorian Studies 46, (1): 69-95.

In "David Copperfield and the pursuit of happiness" Annette Frederico asserts that David Copperfield centrals around a theme of pursuing happiness and expresses Charles Dickens' social and economic liberalism and increasing frustration. She uses support from the text of the novel to conclude that Dickens connects the idea of pursuing personal happiness to the economic idea of general good.

• Jaffe, Audrey. 1994. Spectacular sympathy: Visuality and ideology in dickens's A christmas carol. PMLA 109, (2) (Mar.): 254-65.

In "Spectacular Sympathy" Audrey Jaffe shows the themes of sympathy in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. She cites "Victorian culture's dominant values" to explain her point. The sympathy Jaffe explores also pertains to the sympathy Adam Smith argues vehemently for in economics. She concludes that A Christmas Carol is a novel of the culture Dickens lived in.

• Rowlinson, Matthew Charles, 1956-. 1996. Reading capital with little nell. The Yale Journal of Criticism 9, (2): 347-80.

In "Reading Capital with Little Nell" Matthew Rowlinson contends that Marx left out the important principle of materialism in his theory of capital. He uses Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop to illustrate this point. He states that The Old Curiosity Shop "allegorizes the formal conditions of its own existence" and this allegory can be applied to the flaws in Marx's theory. Rowlinson concludes that the characters in The Old Curiosity Shop support the missing materialism.