CHARLES DICKENS

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

(Portsmouth, UK, 1812-Gad's Hill, id., 1870) British writer. In 1822, his family moved from Kent to London, and two years later his father was imprisoned for debt. The future writer then went to work in a shoe factory, where he met the harsh living conditions of the lower classes, whose complaint devoted much of his work.

Self-taught, excluding the two and a half years he spent in a private school, got a job as a trainee lawyer in 1827, but already aspired to be a playwright and journalist. He learned shorthand and, little by little, he managed to make a living with my writing, and began writing chronicles of courts to access later to a parliamentary journalist position and finally, under the pseudonym Boz, published a series of articles inspired everyday life in London (Sketches by Boz).

The same year, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the director of the Morning Chronicle, the newspaper that spread, between 1836 and 1837, the saga of The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and the subsequent and Nicholas Nickleby. The serialization of virtually all his novels created a special relationship with his public, which came to exercise a significant influence, and his novels are delivered in a more or less directly on the issues of their time.

In these years, it evolved from a light style the socially engaged attitudes of Oliver Twist. These early novels gave him a huge popular success and gave him some popularity among the upper class and educated, and he was received with great honor in the United States in 1842, but was soon disabused of American society, perceiving in it all the vices of the Old World. His criticism, reflected in a series of articles and in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit, outraged in America, and the novel marked the most notorious failure of his career in the UK. However, he regained the favor of his audience in 1843, with the publication of A Christmas Carol.

After a few trips to Italy, Switzerland and France, made some inroads into the theatrical and founded the Daily News, a newspaper that would have a short life. His mature stage opened with Dombey and Son (1848), novel that reached almost perfect control of resources and whose argument novelistic planned to the last detail, thus exceeding the tendency to improvise their first titles, they gave vent to their proverbial inventiveness in creating situations and characters, sometimes responsible for the lack of unity of the work. In 1849 he founded the Houseold Words, a weekly in which, besides disseminating texts little known authors, like his friend Wilkie Collins, published Bleak House and Hard Times, two of the most successful works of the entire production. In Words Houseold pages also appeared several trials, almost always oriented toward social reform.

Despite the ten children he had in his marriage, the increasing difficulties caused by extramarital affairs of Dickens eventually led to divorce in 1858, apparently because of his passion for a young actress, Ellen Teman, which must have been her lover . Dickens had to defend the social scandal made a public statement in the same newspaper. In 1858 he undertook a tour of the UK and Ireland, where he read excerpts from his work publicly. After purchasing the house where he spent his childhood, Gad's Hill Place, in 1856, soon became his permanent residence.

The tour started in 1867 by the United States confirmed its worldwide notoriety, and so was applauded long and exhausting conference, thrilled audiences with readings of his work and even came to be received by Queen Victoria shortly before his death, accelerated by the effects that a railway accident left his already failing health.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

EARLY LIFE

Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport district, belonging to the city of Portsmouth, son of John Dickens (1786-1851), clerk of the Paymaster of the Navy in the arsenal of Portsmouth Harbour, and its wife Elizabeth Barrow (1789-1863). In 1814, the family moved to London, Somerset House, at number ten on Norfolk Street. When the future writer was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. His mother was middle class and his father always dragged debts due to his excessive inclination to waste. Charles received no education until the age of nine years, which later critics reproached him, considering his training in excess self. At this age, after attending a school in Rome Lane, studied culture in the school of William Gile, an Oxford graduate. He spent his time away from home, reading voraciously. He showed a particular fondness for the picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. This would be his favorite writer. I also read with relish adventure stories like Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. In 1823, he lived with his family in London, at number 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town, which was then one of the poorest suburbs of the city. Although his early years seem to have been an idyllic time, he was described as a "very young child and not particularly care." We also talk about his extreme pathos and his photographic memory of people and events that helped move the reality ficción.

His life changed when his father was deeply denounced by defaulting on their debts and imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors prison. Most of the family moved to live with Mr. Dickens to jail, then possibility provided by law, which allowed the family to share his cell delinquent. Charles was welcomed in a house of Little College Street, run by Mrs. Roylance and went on Sunday to visit her father in prison.

At twelve years, it was considered that the future novelist was old enough to start working, and began his working life in workdays of ten hours in Warren's boot-blacking factory, a factory of shoe polish, located near the present Charing Cross railway station in London. During this period his life was pasting labels on bottles of polish shoes (shoe polish), earned six shillings a week. With this money, he had to pay his room and helped the family, most of whom were living with her father, who remained incarcerated.

After a few months, his family was able to leave the Marshalsea prison, but his financial situation did not improve until later, when the death of Charles's maternal grandmother, his father received a legacy of £ 250. Her mother retired immediately Charles Company, which was owned by her relatives. Dickens never forget the efforts of his mother to force him to stay in the factory. These mark his life experiences as a writer devoted much of his work to denounce the deplorable conditions under which survived the proletarian classes. In his novel David Copperfield, judged as the most autobiographical, wrote: "I received no counseling, no support, no stimulants, no consolation, no assistance of any kind, from anyone who might remember me. ¡Much wanted to go to heaven! ".

FIRST STAGE

In May 1827, Dickens began working as an intern at the law firm of Ellis & Blackmore Attorneys and after a stint as court stenographer.

In 1828 he began working as a reporter for the "Doctor's Commons" and later entered as a parliamentary reporter in the "True Sun". Around this time he became interested in the London stage, pointing to acting classes, but the day of the completion of casting, suffered flu and could not attend, so fading dream of being a stage actor.

In 1834 he was hired as the Morning Chronicle political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and traveling across the country to cover election campaigns. In 1836 his articles in the form of literary sketches that had been appearing in various publications since 1833, forming the first published volume of Sketches by Boz and gave way in March of that year to the publication of the first deliveries of "Roles Pickwick. " Later he continued contributing and editing newspapers for much of his life.

On April 2, 1836 he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth (1816-1879) and took up residence in Bloomsbury. They had ten children: Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (1837-1896), Mary Dickens (1838-1896) Kate Macready Dickens (1839-1929), Walter Landor Dickens (1841-1863), Francis Jeffrey Dickens (1844-1886), Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens (1845-1912), Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens (1847-1872), Henry Fielding Dickens (1849-1933), Dora Annie Dickens (1850-1851) and Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens (1852-1902).

In 1836 he accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, which continue until 1839, when he discussed with the owner. Two other newspapers that Dickens was a regular contributor were Household Words and All the Year Round. In 1842, he traveled with his wife to the United States, which briefly described American Travel notes and also served as the basis of any of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Soon after he began to show interest in Unitarian Christian, though he would be an Anglican, at least nominally, for the rest of his life. Dickens's writings were extremely popular in their day and were widely read. In 1856, his popularity allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This large house in Higham, Kent, had a special meaning for the writer, as a boy had walked close by and had dreamed of inhabiting. The place was also the place where they develop some scenes from the first part of Henry IV of Shakespeare, literary connection pleased Dickens.

Vio published nine deliveries in 1836 and the remaining eleven in 1837, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club ("The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"). His next work was Oliver Twist (1837-1838) a story authentically autobiographical and was serialized for two months. This work continued Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1840) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), which recounts the misfortunes of little Nelly, with passages inspired by the recent death of her sister Mary Hogarth, seventeen whom Dickens adored. The play was a great success in England and America.

Thanks to the work that was published, Dickens won great prestige. In 1841 he became the adopted son of the city of Edinburgh and traveled to the United States, where it was rejected by the society of this country because of the conferences and the novel taught American Notes, against slavery and Dickens had personally experienced in childhood. Although it is renconcilió with the public after the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843.

His novel Dombey and Son ("Dombey and Son"), 1846-1848, was a change in his working method: improvisation went into full planning for writing relying on the expertise that reached in the resource management novelistic. He founded in 1849 the weekly Household Words, where disseminated writings of little known and which published two of his most sublime works: Bleak House ("Bleak House"), 1852-1853, and Hard Times ("Hard Times"), 1854.

It was regarded as the greatest novelist of the social. Was submitted as a heavy workload designed to meet the demands of his readers, Dickens soon fell into a crisis that led him to break with his publishers, after requiring higher pay, a request that was denied. Thereafter, Dickens began a series of trips to Italy, Italian publishing Images, Switzerland and France, where he met a young Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne, besides admiring Parisian society. On his return to England, forced by new economic, spread out into other areas: organized theater, founded the Daily News, was an actor and began to lecture, as it was about copyright, defending hookers and condemns the death penalty in vogue in London as entertainment of the people.

His big best seller was David Copperfield, which went on to sell 100,000 copies up soon. It was also the first writer to use the word detective novels.

SECOND STAGE

Around 1850 Dickens's health had worsened, this change was compounded by the death of his father, a daughter and his sister Fanny. Dickens separated from his wife in 1858. In the Victorian era, divorce was unthinkable, particularly for celebrities like him. However, it continued to maintain her and the house for the next 20 years, until the day she died. Although initially lived happily together, Catherine did not seem in the least share the boundless energy that Dickens had. His job of watching their ten children and the pressure of living with a world famous novelist certainly did not help. Georgina's sister, Catherine, moved to help her, but rumors that Charles was romantically involved with his sister. An indication of the marital crisis occurred when, in 1855, he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell. Mary also was married at this time, but she had changed a lot of romantic memory that Dickens had it. Thereafter, the change of the character of Charles Dickens was so remarkable that several friends said it did not recognize the person they had known. Nevertheless, Dickens continued writing and lecturing and took refuge in the house of his friend Wilkie Collins (the creator of the mystery). They came together to write stories and recommended ideas for their novels. In 1859 he published A Tale of Two Cities. In 1863 he created The Arts Club.

On June 9, 1865, while returning from France to see Ellen Ternan, Dickens had an accident, the famous Staplehurst rail crash, in which the first seven carriages of the train fell off a bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage that fell was one where he was Dickens. The novelist spent a lot of time tending to the wounded and dying before rescuers arrived. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to the car only to get it back. Typical of Dickens, he then would use this terrible experience to write his short ghost story The Signal-Man in which the main character has a premonition of a rail crash.

Dickens managed to escape from the investigation of the crash, because as we now know, he was traveling that day with Ellen Ternan and her mother, which could cause a scandal. Ellen, an actress, had been Dickens's companion since he ended his marriage, and, as he met her in 1857, was probably the last reason for separation. She remained his companion, rather his wife, until the day of his death. The dimensions of the affair were unknown until the publication in 1939 of Dickens and his daughter, a book about the author's family relationship with his daughter Kate. Kate Dickens worked with Gladys Storey on the book before his death in 1929, and said that Dickens and Ternan had a son who died in infancy, although there is no concrete evidence to support his claims.

Dickens, though unharmed, never fully recovered from the Staplehurst crash. His prolific pen was dedicated to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which remained unfinished in its last third, and whose ultimate unknown until now led to numerous assumptions. Much of his time was spent in public readings from his best-loved novels. Dickens was fascinated by the theater as an escape from the real world, and theaters and theatrical groups appear in Nicholas Nickleby. The traveling shows were extremely popular, and December 2, 1867 Dickens gave his first public reading in the United States, in a theater in New York. The effort and passion he put into these readings with individual voices for their characters is something that perhaps contributed to his death.

Rewrote the Old Year Magazine until his death. Shortly afterwards he was received by Queen Victoria I, which was great reader of his works.

In 1869 Dickens agreed to chair the Birmingham and Midland Institute, becoming its sixteenth president.

Five years after the accident, on June 9, 1870, died the day after suffering a stroke, without regaining consciousness. Against his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral (the closest to your home), "on the cheap, unostentatious, and strictly private", it was called "Poets Corner" of Westminster Abbey, although sought to respect their desire for privacy. His death circulated an epitaph printed in stating that "was a supporter of the poor, the miserable, and the oppressed, and with his death the world has lost one of the greatest English writers." Dickens stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honor, and the only size statue dates from 1981, was made by Francis Edwin Elwell, and is located in Clark Park, Philadelphia, in the United States. Her dream was to be free and got it as a writer.

His novel Oliver Twist has been taken on numerous occasions to the big screen.

LITERARY STYLE

Dickens's style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satire on the snobbery of the British aristocracy, he called one of his characters' The Noble Refrigerator "- are often popular. Comparisons of orphans with shareholders or diners with furniture are some of his most acclaimed ironies.

CHARACTERS

A Dickens have called an author whose characters are among the most memorable and creative English literature - if not exclusively for its unusual characteristics, certainly by name. Characters like Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, Mrs Gamp, David Copperfield, Charles Darnay, Oliver Twist, Micawber, Pecksniff, Miss Havisham, Wackford Squeers and many others are so well known, you can even believe they have a life outside his novels and stories with other authors continue. A Dickens loved the style of the eighteenth century, the Gothic romance, even came to take it game-Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey was a well-known parody, and while some are grotesque, his eccentricities are often overshadow their stories. One of the best drawn characters in his novels is London itself. From the bars outside the city to the banks of the Thames, all aspects of the British capital are described by someone who truly loved her and spent many hours walking its streets.

SOCIAL CRITICISM

Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social criticism. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Through his works, Dickens retained an empathy for the common man and a skepticism of the bourgeois family. Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), was responsible for cleaning the present suburb of London which was the basis of the story of Jacob's Island. In addition, with the character of a tragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens "humanised" such women for readers, women were prized as "unfortunate" victims inherent immoral system of the Victorian economy. Bleak House and Little Dorrit elaborated extensive critiques of the Victorian institutional apparatus: the interminable lawsuits of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak House and the dual attack in Little Dorrit with inefficiency and corruption Patent offices and the irregular market speculation.


LITERARY TECHNIQUES

Dickens often idealized characters and scenes using high sentimental touch contrasting with his caricatures and the terrible social truths revealed. The long scene of the death of Little Nell in Old antique shop (1841) was received as incredibly moving by readers of his time, but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde. In 1903 Chesterton said, on the same topic, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of the little, what object."
In Oliver Twist, Dickens provides readers with an idealized portrait of a young unrealistically good, whose values ​​are never subverted by brutal orphanages or coerced interventions in a small band of pickpockets. His later novels also center on idealized characters (Esther Summerson as in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens to move with his social criticism. Most of his novels are related to social realism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (eg in industrial networks in Hard Times and hypocritical class codes and exclusive in Our Mutual Friend).
Dickens also employs incredible coincidences (eg, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of a high-society family that randomly rescues him from a dangerous group of pickpockets). These matches are common in the eighteenth century - the century picaresque novels (like Tom Jones by Henry Fielding), who rather enjoyed Dickens. For Dickens this was an index of a humanitarian Christianity led him to believe that good always wins in the end, even in unexpected ways. Viewing this from a biographical context, Dickens's life, against what was expected, took him from a bereaved children forced to work long hours in a boot factory at the age of 12 years (when his father was in prison for debts) to its status as the most popular English novelist at the age of 27 years.




AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS



All authors incorporate biographical elements in their fiction, but with Dickens this is very noticeable, even feared hide what he considered his shameful, lowly past.
David Copperfield is one of the clearest autobiographical but the scenes from Bleak House of interminable court cases and legal arguments could only come from a journalist who had to report them. Dickens' own family was sent to prison for poverty, a common theme in many of his books, and the detailed description of life in prison in Little Dorrit Marshalea is due to Dickens's own experiences at that institution.
The Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop is a thought that represents his own sister, the father of Nicholas Nickleby and Wilkins Micawber are certainly the author's own father and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Micawber are similar his madre.7 snobbish nature of Pip from Great Expectations also has some affinity with the author. Dickens may have drawn his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of them and would not reveal their own stories came from the dirt.
Very few knew the details of his life until six years after his death when John Forster published a biography on which Dickens had collaborated. A dark past in Victorian times could taint reputations, as well as some of his characters, and this was perhaps the fear of Dickens himself.

LEGACY

Charles Dickens was a well known personality and his novels were very popular during his lifetime. Finished his first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1837), gave an immediate fame that continued throughout his career. He maintained a high quality in all his writings and although rarely departed from his usual method of always attempting dickensoniano write a great "story" in a conventional manner (the dual narration of Bleak House is a notable exception), he experimented with numerous themes, characterizations and genres. Some of these experiments were more successful than others and the public appreciation of his works varied over time. Normally he was glad to give his readers what they wanted and the monthly or weekly publication of his works in episodes meant that the book could change as the story happened as public taste. A good example of this are the American episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit, which were made in response to Dickens lowest price of its first chapters. In Our Mutual Friend inclusion of Riaj character was a positive portrayal of a Jewish character, after which criticized Fagin in Oliver Twist.

Her popularity waned a bit after his death, but remains one of the best known and most read of British writers. At least 180 movies and TV adaptations based on Dickens's work confirms the aforementioned success. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his life and in 1913 was made a silent film of The Pickwick Papers.

His characters were often so memorable, they seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs. Gamp and Pickwickian, and Gradgrind Pecksniffian entered dictionaries due to Dickens portraits that made them, as quixotic, hypocritical or insensitive. Sam Weller, the irreverent and madcap help of House of The Pickwick Papers, was an early superstar, perhaps better known than his author at first. This is also his most famous novel A Christmas Carol, with new adaptations almost every day. It is also the most filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early days of cinema. This simple moralistic tale with its theme of redemption, for many, sum all the true meaning of Christmas and eclipses all other stories, also shows archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) to the Western consciousness. A Christmas Carol was written by Dickens in an attempt to prevent a financial disaster as a result of poor sales of Martin Chuzzlewit. Years later, share Dickens was always 'deeply concerned' by writing Christmas Carol and the novel rejuvenated his career as a renowned author.

At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor in the heart of the empire. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues-such as hygiene and workhouses-but his fiction was probably the most powerful way to change public opinion on class inequalities. He then described the exploitation and repression of the poor and condemned the public officials who allowed the existence of such abuses. His most strident indictment of this condition is in Hard Times (1854), his only novel that deals with the working class. In this paper, using both virulence and satire to illustrate how this marginalized social stratum was termed "Hands" by employers, that is, they were not really people but only appendages of the machines that they operated.

His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to include in their agendas such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in Little Dorrit and The Pickwick Papers were the first movers in the destruction of Marshalsea and Fleet Prison. As Karl Marx said, Dickens and other novelists of Victorian England, "... showed the world more political and social truths than were spoken by professional politicians, publicists and moralists together ...". The exceptional popularity of his novels, even those with issues of social opposition (Bleak House, 1853, Little Dorrit, 1857, Our Mutual Friend, 1865) underscored not only his almost natural ability to create compelling stories and unforgettable characters, but also claimed that public issues and social justice that were usually ignored, they were confronted.

His fiction, with consistent descriptions of nineteenth century English life, has come to symbolize accurately and anachronistic Victorian society (1837-1901) as uniformly "Dickensian", when in fact, his novels chronicle the period from 1770 to 1860. In the decade following his death in 1870, a more intense social and philosophical pessimism prevailed in British fiction, these issues contrasted with religious faith that accompanied even the bleakest of Dickens's novels. Later novelists of Victorian England, as Thomas Hardy and George Grissing were influenced by Dickens, but his works exhibit a lack of religious belief and portrayed characters immersed in the social forces (mainly the lower class) who were destined to a tragic end beyond its control.

Novelists continue influenced by his books, eg writers as Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe, and John Irving evidence direct connections with Dickens. Humorist James Finn Garner even wrote a version of "politically correct" in A Christmas Carol. However, Dickens stands today as a brilliant innovator and sometimes flawed novelist whose stories and characters have become not only literary archetypes but also part of the public imagination.

ARTWORKS

- The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837)
- Oliver Twist (1837-1839)
- Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839)
- The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841)
- Barnaby Rudge (1841)
- A Christmas Carol (1843) (also known as A Christmas Carol and A Christmas Carol)
- Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)
- Dombey and Son (1846-1848)
- David Copperfield (1849-1850)
- Bleak House (1852-1853)
- Hard Times (1854)
- Little Dorrit (1855-1857)
- Tale of Two Cities (1859)
- Great Expectations (1860-1861)
- Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)
- The flagman (1866)

COMMEMORATION OF CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Dickens has been commemorated in the Google page, in one of his doodles.

Commemoration, charles dickens
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