CHARLES DICKENS
(1812 – 1870)
(Project work by Karina DRESHPAN)
Early Years
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in
Portsmouth. His father, John Dickens, was a poor yet easy-going naval clerk.
From early years Charles showed his creative bents. Parents encouraged and
pampered their child, but the family idyll suddenly ended, when family gone
broke.
As his father was imprisoned because of debts his
mother had to do something to make ends meet. Young Dickens was sent to a shoe-polish
factory. There he found his love to the offended and poor, found his
understanding of their suffering, and of violence they faced, He learned much
about poverty and terrible social organizations, such as schools for the poor
and debt prisons, where he visited his father. He witnessed the ruthless exploitation
of children’s labor and flourishing of crime in big cities. Dickens had an ambition
to rise back to the top of the society and get his liberty back.
The beginning
of literary career
Dickens started to write as a reporter. As soon
as he had done several reporter tasks, he was noticed and began to go up a
career ladder, impressing his colleagues with irony and vivacity of his
statement and richness of the language he used.
The first of his works, entitled Scratches
by Boz, were published in 1836. But the real success came to Dickens later
that year, when the first chapters of his humorous Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
appeared. Two years later Dickens wrote his Oliver
Twist (see a scene from the film on the right) – the story about an orphan,
who got to the slums of London, and The
Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. After his journey to America,
where public met Dickens with enthusiasm, Dickens wrote his Martin Chuzzlewit , a novel-parody on
Americans. Many things in the young capitalist country seemed to Dickens being
mad, unrealistic and chaotic, and he did not hesitate to tell the Yankees lots
of truth about them. His novel caused lots of rough protests from the transatlantic
public’s side.
The Victorian cult of coziness, comfort,
gorgeous traditional holidays was expressed in Dickens’s Christmas Books – in 1843 the Christmas
Carol was published, which were followed by The Chimes, The Cricket on
the Hearth, The Battle of Life
and The Haunted Man. All the aspects
of Dickens’s talent are brightly visible in one of his best novels – Dombey and Son (1848). Then David Copperfield (which full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience
and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone
Author’s oddity and death
Dickens spontaneously and frequently
fell into the state of trance, was exposed to visions and sometimes experienced
state of déjà vu. It was also said, that every word, before it was written
down, was heard by Dickens, and his characters constantly were nearby and
communicated with him. That’s why the writer loved to wander along populous
streets.
Dickens died of stroke at the age of
58 on June 9, 1870 in Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent – not so old, but
exhausted with titanic work, quite chaotic life and great number of different
troubles.
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!
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