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Charles Dickens
(1812-70):
His pen name was Boz. Like that of the children in many of his novels, Dickens's father, a navy clerk, was constantly in debtor's prison, and Dickens was sent to work in a blacking factory at the age of twelve. Most bitter for him, was his parents' failure to educate him. He reacted to this indifference by working hard, a lifelong characteristic. An office boy in a lawyer's office, in time he was to become a parliamentary reporter; after that, Dickens soon found himself in the business of journalism. By age 24 he had written The Pickwick Papers and was, thereafter, famous.
In 1885, the Spectator, an outstanding English newspaper, said that Dicken's "chief fault" was his "mawkish and unreal sentiment."1 In his book, Dickens as a Legal Historian, Wm. S. Holdsworth2, in referring to the popularity of Dickens, wrote:
"Caricature, the humorous exaggeration of characteristics, is always popular, for every one likes to see every one else ridiculed, and burlesque renders any subject ludicrous by an incongruous manner of treating it. So when a talent for caricature and burlesque is turned loose upon the unpopular profession of the law, the result is highly edifying to the laity."3
In all his works, Dickens expressed his philosophy:
"In each book the characters fall into two groups: those on the side of the right, humble, kindly, generous souls, controlled by no systematic principle, but by the spring of benevoloence bubbling up within them ...; [and] those on the side of the wrong, the hypoccrite, misers, selfish arrivistes ..."4
As a concluding note, we should say: Though Dickens was an immensely popular author, he did not write of average circumstances, he was too much involved in the business of selling books. For example, a poor understanding of the Industrial Revolution will be had if one were to consider only the works of Dickens, as entertaining as they may be.
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