Hard Times
Charles Dickens Is Much Loved For His Great Contribution To Classic English Literature. He Was The Quintessential Victorian Author. His Epic Stories, Vivid Characters And Exhaustive Depiction Of Contemporary Life Are Unforgettable.
His Own Story Is One Of Rags To Riches. He Was Born In Portsmouth On 7 February 1812, To John And Elizabeth Dickens. The Good Fortune Of Being Sent To School At The Age Of Nine Was Short-Lived Because His Father, Inspiration For The Character Of Mr Micawber In 'David Copperfield', Was Imprisoned For Bad Debt. The Entire Family, Apart From Charles, Were Sent To Marshalsea Along With Their Patriarch. Charles Was Sent To Work In Warren's Blacking Factory And Endured Appalling Conditions As Well As Loneliness And Despair. After Three Years He Was Returned To School, But The Experience Was Never Forgotten And Became Fictionalised In Two Of His Better-Known Novels 'David Copperfield' And 'Great Expectations'.
Like Many Others, He Began His Literary Career As A Journalist. His Own Father Became A Reporter And Charles Began With The Journals 'The Mirror Of Parliament' And 'The True Sun'. Then In 1833 He Became Parliamentary Journalist For The Morning Chronicle. With New Contacts In The Press He Was Able To Publish A Series Of Sketches Under The Pseudonym 'Boz'. In April 1836, He Married Catherine Hogarth, Daughter Of George Hogarth Who Edited 'Sketches By Boz'. Within The Same Month Came The Publication Of The Highly Successful 'Pickwick Papers', And From That Point On There Was No Looking Back For Dickens.
As Well As A Huge List Of Novels He Published Autobiography, Edited Weekly Periodicals Including 'Household Words' And 'All Year Round', Wrote Travel Books And Administered Charitable Organisations. He Was Also A Theatre Enthusiast, Wrote Plays And Performed Before Queen Victoria In 1851. His Energy Was Inexhaustible And He Spent Much Time Abroad - For Example Lecturing Against Slavery In The United States And Touring Italy With Companions Augustus Egg And Wilkie Collins, A Contemporary Writer Who Inspired Dickens' Final Unfinished Novel 'The Mystery Of Edwin Drood'.
He Was Estranged From His Wife In 1858 After The Birth Of Their Ten Children, But Maintained Relations With His Mistress, The Actress Ellen Ternan. He Died Of A Stroke In 1870. He Is Buried At Westminster Abbey.
(Courtesy: Http://Www.bbc.co.uk/History/Historic_figures/Dickens_charles.shtml)
Links to website about Victorian age (click on the link below)
British social policy, 1601–1948
http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/historyf.htm#1834
This site contains a comprehensive chronicle of the British Poor Laws, starting with the
Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1601 and continuing on through modern social policies of the
1940s. This site provides helpful background information on the Poor Law of 1834 and
Public Health Acts of the Victorian period.
Charles Dickens
helsinki.fi/kasv/nokol/dickens.html
This vast array of Dickens-related material—regarding his life, family, work, homes,
and more—was compiled by a Finnish scholar (text is in English).
Charles Dickens gad’s hill place
perryweb.com/Dickens/index.html
This eclectic Web site provides information about Dickens’ home, Gad’s Hill,
as well as daily quotes, biographical information, crossword puzzles and character
matches, online texts, and more.
a Charles Dickens Journal
This site provides an extensive exploration of Dickens’ life presented as a
year-by-year biography, starting in 1812 and concluding in 1870.
The Charles Dickens museum
This museum, the only surviving London home of Dickens, opened in 1925.
It houses a large collection of Dickens-related items.
Conservation of Charles Dickens’ manuscripts
www.vam.ac.uk/nal/publications/dickens/index.html
This site details the restoration of a collection of Dickens
manuscripts by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The
restoration project covers 33 years of Dickens’ writing,
from Oliver Twist, the earliest, to the still-unfinished
The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Read how curators
discovered cancelled text and correction slips sealed
in the original manuscripts.
David perdue’s Charles Dickens page
Compiled by a Dickens enthusiast, this site
includes illustrations, maps, a timeline, extensive
Web links, and information about Dickens’
work and his travels to America.
Charles Dickens
Dickens
This PBS site is a companion to a three-part
documentary series about the life and career
of Charles Dickens. It provides scholarly essays
about the celebrated author, lets you test your
knowledge of Dickens, and explore his city,
and find links and bibliographic information.
The Dickens fellowship
dickensfellowship.org
The Dickens Fellowship is a worldwide
association of people with an interest
in the life and works of Dickens. The Web site offers information on local chapters,
its annual conference, and the journal The Dickensian.
The Dickens project
The Dickens Project of University of California sponsors an annual conference for
university-level scholars of Dickens and features a student essay contest for high
school students.
Discovering Dickens: a Community reading project
dickens.stanford.edu/index.html
This Stanford University-sponsored site has special editions of Hard Times, A Tale
of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, along with extensive maps, illustrations, and
glossary information.
our mutual friend: The victorian poorhouse
http://dickens.ucsc.edu/OMF/spencer.html
This is an informative essay on the Victorian poorhouse, written by
Sandra Spencer of the University of North Texas.
The peel web
historyhome.co.uk/peel/peelhome.htm
Maintained by Dr. Marjorie Bloy, this site is a resource for researching the
historical context of Dickens’ novels. It contains many primary documents that are
relevant to Dickens’ political interests—specifically, a topic page that focuses on the
Poor Law of 1834.
project gutenberg
http://promo.net/pg/index.html
This site includes online texts of many of Dickens’ works.
salon: “portrait of the artist as a minor Character”
archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/12/13/copperfield/index.html
From the salon.com archives, this is an excerpt of critic David Gates’s Introduction
to the Modern Library’s edition of David Copperfield.
university of virginia library: electronic Text Center
etext.lib.virginia.edu/collections/languages/english/
The Modern English Collection of manuscripts contains e-text versions
of most of Dickens’ novels, including original illustrations.
The victorian web
The Victorian Web contains a Dickens page that offers essays and commentary
about diverse topics related to Dickens’ work (e.g., gender, economic contexts,
science, imagery, themes, and characterization).