Charles Dickens’s contribution as a novelist

Name: Baraiya Bhavna P.Roll No: 3Sem: 2Year: 2012-13

About his life One of the grand masters of

Victorian literature, Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsea, England.

The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation, but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor.

A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy.

He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz(1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life.

Dickens’s major work

Sketches by Boz(1836)

A series dealing with London life.

The Pickwick Papers(1836) The first novel by Charles Dickens. Majority of the characters are male or that most of the

women are treated unsympathetically. The masculinity of the novel rests mainly in the

finesse and accuracy of Dickens’s portrayal of male relationships.

Women are shown either as sweet young objects of romance or as threatening middle-aged predators.

Oliver Twist(1837) Oliver Twist, subtitled The Paris Boy’s

Progress.

It is the second novel by Dickens, Published by Richard Bentley in 1838.

Oliver notable for Dickens’s unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.

The book exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as “The Great London Waif Crisis”: the large number of orphans in London in the Dickens’s era.

Social novel.

Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time.

Nicholas Nickleby(1838) The Old Curiosity Shop(1840) Barnaby Rudge(1841) American Notes(1842) Martin Chuzzlewit(1843) A Christmas Carol(1843) Dombey and Son(1846) David Copperfield Bleak House(1852) Hard Times(1854) Little Dorrit(1855) A Tale of Two Cities(1859) Great Expactations(1860) Our Mutual Friend(1864)

Features of his novel

Their Popularity. His interest in Social Reformer. His Imagination. His humour and Pathos. His mannerisms In time his style

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