Favorite Author: Charles Dickens

I first got into Charles Dickens, because I watched some adaptations of his novels on TV. I believe the first one was Little Dorrit, which my friend and I watched a number of times during our 4 month Asia trip. She had bought the DVD set and a portable player and we utilized this during any down time. The series was so beautifully made that it was easily able to stand a re-watch (or many) and when we came to a bigger book store we hunted down copies of the book and started reading. And  I loved it!

Charles Dickens is a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. I LOVE some of his books like “David Copperfield”, “Bleak House”, “Nicholas Nickleby" and “Little Dorrit", but some of his other most notable works I really don’t like, e.g. “A Tale of Two Cities”and “Great Expectations”. 

Dickens was born in 1812, and at a young age he had to leave school to work in a factory, as his father was imprisoned for debt. Despite this lack of formal education he wrote and edited thousands of pages during his life, and aside from writing fiction, he also worked for children’s rights and other social reforms. This interest in social reform is believed to stem from his own share in the hard working conditions of the poor, when he was at the factory as a child. Later on he worked in the law, first as a clerk and then as a freelance reporter. His experiences in this field were also put into his later writings, particularly “Bleak House”. Generally a lot of his experiences and relationships served as inspiration for his writing, and some of his friends and family would recognize themselves or others in his works. 

Dickens’ early writings were usually published in a serialized form with weekly or monthly installments. This meant that poorer people could afford the magazines or pamphlets, and Dickens could incorporate his readers’ critiques and feedback into the ongoing story. Despite this choppy style of writing, with no room for editing the early parts of the story, Dickens always managed to make the story coherent and interesting. 

Dickens became quite famous in his own time and was praised by fellow writers for the realism, comedy and social criticism of his works. Other writers however felt that he lacked psychological depth and was too sentimental. Perhaps some of the characters are a bit too perfect and sweet and the story lines often do come together in quite convenient ways, but so what? It is never unrealistic or forced, and if there is some sentimentality, it is outweighed by the nitty gritty descriptions of the squalor of the poor. 

He died in June 1870 and was laid to rest in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey against his wishes. He had wanted to be buried in Rochester Cathedral in a private manner. 

Link to the bibliography of Charles Dickens 

All facts above from Wikipedia