In 1812, Charles John Huffem Dickens was born in England. He became the second child in the family, but after that six more children were born in the family. Parents couldn't feed such a thing large family and the father, John, fell into terrible debt. They put him in special prison for debtors, and the wife and children were considered debt slaves. With difficult financial situation helped to cope with the inheritance: John Dickens received a considerable fortune from deceased grandmother, and was able to pay off all debts.
From childhood, Charles Dickens was forced to work, and even after his father was released from prison, his mother forced him to continue working at the factory, combining this with his studies at Wellington Academy. After completing his education, he took a job as a clerk, where he worked for a year, after which he resigned and chose to work as a freelance reporter. Already in 1830, the talent of the young writer began to be noted and he was invited to the local newspaper.
Charles Dickens' first love was Maria Bidnell, a girl from a wealthy family. But the spoiled reputation of John Dickens did not allow the girl's parents to accept the debtor's son into the family, and the couple moved away from each other, and later completely broke up. In 1836, the novelist married Catherine Thomson Hogarth, who bore him ten children. But so big family became a burden for the writer, and he left her. Further, his life was full of novels, but the longest and most famous of them was with eighteen-year-old Ellen Ternan, with whom Dickens began a relationship in 1857, and lasted 13 years, until the writer's death. Based on their novel in 2013, the film "Invisible Woman" was filmed.
The great writer died of a stroke in 1870. He was buried at Westminster Abbey. The novelist did not like any kind of monuments and forbade them to dedicate sculptures to him during his lifetime and even after his death. Despite this, these monuments exist in Russia, the USA, Australia and England.
Bibliography
The first works of the English novelist were published six years after the completion of his work as a clerk, and the first serious work ("The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club") was published a year later. The talent of the young writer was noted even by the Russian prose writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. The bright and believable psychological portraits in his works, which were highly regarded by critics, and are still appreciated to this day. Young Dickens's realistic writing style attracted more and more readers, and he began to receive good royalties.
In 1838, the writer published the novel "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" about the life of an orphan boy and his difficulties in life. In 1840, The Antiquities Shop was published, in a sense a humorous work about the girl Nell. Three years later, "A Christmas Story" was published, where vices were exposed. social peace and the people living in it. Since 1850, novels have become more serious, and now the world sees a book about David Copperfield. " Cold house"1853, as well as" A Tale of Two Cities "and" Great Expectations "(1859 and 1860), as well as all the works of the author, reflected all the complexity social relations and the injustice of the prevailing order.
CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)
Charles Dickens is a Victorian era writer who not only reflected it in his own works and raised the difficulties that worried English society, but also tried to solve them. His active literary and social activity contributed to huge changes - the elimination of debt prisons, reforms in the field of education and justice, an increase in the number of charities and the revival of patronage. His love for the poor and the offended was true, not fake, for him they were just as full members of society as the rich, he gave them all the strength of his own talent, all his love, revealing to them the poetry of their everyday life, and became the emblem of Great Britain everyday.
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in the family of a small bureaucrat of the naval treasury John Dickens. At first, Charles' ancestors lived relatively well, but after a while obstacles began to appear. The prerequisite for the troubles was that the writer's father was very frivolous about family well-being, was very fond of theater and wine, often borrowed funds without having the ability to return them recently. In addition, he treated the upbringing of his offspring, who remembered this forever. Charles also lacked maternal affection and attention. Mom simply did not have time for him, as she tried to give advice to all her children (and there were eight of them).
So, books and life itself were his most important educators, Charles received his initial education at Chatham School, where then Oxford graduate William Giles taught; he instilled in the boy a love of British literature and reading in general.
The idyll of his young years did not last long: his father was completely entangled in debt, and the family went to London. The situation was getting worse. When Charles's father ended up in Marshallsea's debt jail, the family moved to him (according to English law, this was allowed). To somehow contribute to the failure, Charles is arranged in a factory. 6 months spent in a dirty ancient room were almost the most terrible for an impressionable little boy: the same work lasted from morning to evening. It was also a moral trauma for Charles, who was eager to learn.
At this time, the guy had another hobby - London. Dickens could wander the streets for hours. Specifically here, in the English slums, he, without even suspecting, took out his true upbringing. So little Charles did in his own imagination the future Dickensian London. He paved the way for his heroes: in whatever corner of this town they would not hide, he had been there earlier.
Mom's legacy, inherited by John and William Dickens, was enough to pay off creditors and provide the family with a more or less decent life. Charles happily left the factory and continued his studies at a private school, after graduating from which he began working as a junior clerk for a lawyer for Blackmore. But, having a lively disposition, he attends performances and, dreaming of a theatrical future, takes lessons in stage skills. In addition, Charles was attracted by the work of a reporter. Therefore, he stubbornly learns stenography at night, and studies laws by day.
Since 1832, Charles worked in a local newspaper, then was an employee of the magazine "Parliament Mirror", which belonged to his relative. Dickens very quickly managed to stand out among other employees of the editorial office: his reports were fascinating and even clearer than those of his colleagues, although all journalists were forbidden to take notes. The solution is extraordinary and original: Charles put on long and hard cuffs, and later copied them in a small letter.
Personal cares were added to the professional - the family sought funds, and the father again went into debt. This decided the next steps - Dickens took up the pen. The new work did not achieve much effort: so many were changed their minds, experienced, seen that it was only necessary to take up the paper, and then it was a matter of reporter's experience and time.
At the end of 1833, the Mansley Magazine magazine published the story Dinner at Poplar Wok, albeit without the name of the creator. Readers began to eagerly await the stories of the creator, who decided to hide his name under the pseudonym "Boz" (playful nickname younger brother Charles Dickens, which later became clear to hundreds of thousands of readers). So the writer continued to be called when he became famous. The essays, of which Bop was the creator, saw the lights of various magazines, sometimes against the wishes of Dickens, as evidenced by letters to friends. The writer turned to the genre of the essay not by chance: even in childhood, for the sake of joy, he loved to write something about the people with whom fate brought him, about noteworthy places where I've been. With age, such records became more - it was invaluable material, waiting for its own time.
Convinced that the essays were a sensation among readers, Dickens ventured to publish them in a separate book. So, in 1836 appeared on the shelves "Essays by Bose" in 2 volumes. Critics, for the most part, underestimate the first book of Dickens, write about it condescendingly and condescendingly: some believed that the creator was characterized by verbosity, caused by uncertainty and apprehension, as well as a desire to attract the reader's attention.
So, in the essays, you can find a lot of unfinished and imperfect, but this is explained by the lack of literary experience, but not talent. And apprenticeship is a period through which almost every writer passes, but for the first he is small, and the other remains a student until the end of his life.
From the pages of the cycle "Drawings from Life", the reader becomes fast paced life the capital, which is depicted brightly and vividly.
Dickens is a real master of the cityscape. London is not only for him locality and part of his life. Dickens's descriptions are, in fact, impressionistic sketches, where visual, auditory and even taste memories play a huge role ("Streets. Evening"). Dickens pays his attention to the burning difficulties of our time: the miserable existence of the lower classes leads to the degradation of the personality, which begins to find solace in wine (essay "Home for Life").
The theme of human loneliness in the bourgeois world was brought up in the essay “Thoughts about People”. In his essay "Christmas Dinner", Dickens addressed the theme of the Christmas holiday for the first time as a sign of home well-being and comfort. The creator's sympathies belong to the ordinary people, who are close and understandable to him, while the representative of the "middle class" - the bourgeois - becomes a target for satirical arrows. Snobbery and vanity, stinginess and narrow-mindedness - these are the main features of the rich people, which could be funny if they did not constitute a danger to the usual equilibrium of society. A gallery of very specific and individualized characters passes before the reader (essays "Horatio Sparkins", "Sightseeing trip by boat" and others).
The significance of the works included in the “Stories” cycle should not be underestimated; Charles Dickens used the future experience in subsequent works.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is a work that made Dickens famous, but it seems incomprehensible to the modern reader. It's about the writer's day, the literary situation.
The life of that time gave rise to literature, perhaps in almost all cases primitive, but not devoid of what the British will then so revere Dickens and healthy optimism, sincerity and gaiety. After the publication of "Sketches of Bose", one of the friends of the Chapman company was granted to Charles Dickens and offered a role in a publication that would partially resemble modern comics. This should be a joyous story about a sports club.
A great sensation of notes forced the creator to believe in his own strength and he, without completing this work, signed a contract for new romance The Adventures of Oliver Twist.
The novel "Notes of the Club" was completed in 1837. The name of the creator was clear to every Briton. This novel showed the growth of the skill of the writer, who with his heroes went through a difficult path: from a conventional hero funny story before unusual person, from humorist writer to courageous fighter against evil. This is not only the most optimistic and cloudless work of Dickens, he turned out to be the prototype of all novels, their plot structure.
On January 6, 1842, Dickens sailed to the United States with his wife. The intention to go overseas has appeared in the writer for a long time. At first, it was an eagerness to go to America to see for oneself the advantages of American democracy, about which the Americans shouted to the whole world. He also wanted to completely resolve the issue of copyright, since English writers and first himself were tormented for his absence.
South American memoirs were the material for the novel by Charles Dickens - "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844). He immediately worked on the story "A Christmas Carol", founded the recognizable cycle of Christmas stories and stories.
After breaking up with the publishing house in 1844, he traveled to Italy, France, Switzerland. Memories from the trip are reproduced in the cycle "Pictures of Italy".
The beginning of the 50s is a new step in the work of Dickens. In 1850 he began work on A Story of Great Britain for the Little Children, which was to be interesting and romantic. During this period, Dickens worked intensively in various genres, but gave preference to the novel and its genre forms: the historical novel ("A Tale of Two Towns" 1859), the social novel ("Little Dorrin" 1855-1857), the socially adventurous (" Huge Hopes "1861), detective stories (" Edwin Drood's Secret "1870), a utopian novel (" languid times "1854).
Charles Dickens was unable to finish his own latest novel, Edwin Drood's Secret. On June 8, 1870, he became ill; The news of the death of the beloved writer practically shook the UK. It was a state catastrophe. He was buried in the poets' corner at Westminster Abbey.
Charles Dickens- the largest English prose writer, author of socio-psycho-logical novels that recreated the way of life, customs and ideas of Great Britain in the era of early Victorianism, as well as features of the national character and worldview. Sharp criticism of the flaws of a society built on social inequality and the cult of pragmatic "benefits" was combined in his works with the pathos of affirming humanistic ideals. Dickens' style is characterized by a synthesis realistic and romantic , household and folklore-mythological elements.
The life of Charles Dickens in dates and facts
February 7, 1812- was born in Landport near Portsmouth in the family of an employee financial management maritime department.
WITH 1817 on 1823 g... the Dickens family lived in Chatham, where Charles began attending school. He later called these years the happiest in his life. The end of a serene childhood was put by financial troubles, because of which his father was imprisoned in debt, and 11-year-old Charles was forced to work for several months at a factory that produced wax.
1824 -1826 - years of study in private school Wellington House Academy.
1827 g.- entered the place of a junior clerk in a law office.
V 1828 g.- got a job as a freelance reporter in the Court of Justice, and in 1832 g.- a parliamentary correspondent.
V 1833 g. in a monthly magazine, the writer published his first essay - "Lunch at Poplar Wok" signed by the pseudonym "Boz".
1836 g.- published the first sections of the novel "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club", which had great success with readers. In the same year, Dickens married the daughter of lawyer and journalist J. Hogarth, Keith, with whom he created a large a large family, but never experienced marital happiness.
1837-1841 biennium- the famous novels of Charles Dickens are published: "The Adventures of Oliver Twist"(1839), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839), "Shop of antiquities"(1840), etc.
V 1842 g. the writer made a trip to the United States, during which he experienced deep disappointment in American democracy and the American way of life. These impressions are reflected in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit(1844). Then a cycle appeared "Christmas stories"(1848), novels "Dombey and Son"(1848), "The Life of David Copperfield, Telling Himself" (1850).Material from the site
V 1850s- novels were written "Bleak House" (1853), "Hard times"(1854) and "Little Dorrit"(1857). For some time, Dickens worked as editor of the magazine "Home Reading", in which he published his own works. After a conflict with publishers, he founded a similar magazine "Round the Year".
WITH 1858 g. the writer gave public readings of his works. These readings have become a legendary phenomenon in European cultural life.
1860s- worked on novels "Great expectations" (1861), "Our mutual friend" (1865), "The Mystery of Edwid Drood"(1870, unfinished).
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Charles Dickens (who first wrote under the pseudonym Bose) is a famous English writer. Together with Thackeray he - chief representative English and European novel in general, the second half of the XIX centuries.
Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Landport, near Portsmouth, died on June 9, 1870. Around 1816, he and his parents moved to Chatham, and in the winter of 1822-23 to London. Dickens was in poor health, did not get good school education, but already as a child he was constantly fond of reading Russian novelists and playwrights. For some time, Dickens's father sat as a prisoner in a debt prison, and Charles was then engaged in a trading company wrapping packages, for which he received 6 or 7 shillings a week. Then the circumstances of the Dickens family improved. Charles began attending the Academy in Hamstedrode and became a secretary to the Bar, which gave him a special opportunity to study English folk life... At the same time he studied literature at the British Museum, learned to write shorthand, got a job as a reporter in Parliament and showed such brilliant ability in this occupation that he soon became a press officer - in the Parlamentspiegel, and later in the Morning Chronicle.
Charles Dickens. Photo 1867-68
In the Monthly Magazine, in the Morning Chronicle and other similar newspapers, Dickens began to publish sketches from the life of the lower strata of the capital's population in December 1833, which he then published in a collection entitled Sketches of London. The pseudonym "Boz" (name abbreviation Moses, which was usually called Dickens's younger brother, Augustus, after one of the children bred in Goldsmith's novel "Wexfield Priest") he first signed in August 1834.
The second series of Essays was published in 1835. But Dickens's own glory began with his Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37). Here literary technique Dickens is not particularly great, the figures he deduced are at first more like caricatures, and only little by little they reach a high comic. But the whole work, - cheerful, full of warmth and life truth, immediately made an impression on the public so complete and direct that the critic could only state its brilliant success.
Charles Dickens' England
In 1837-39 Dickens wrote his second novel, Oliver Twist, a story from the life of the lower strata of society. This was followed by "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), who still had more success than Pickwick, Mr. Humphrey's Watch (1840-41), a series of stories in which pictures of passions, interesting adventures, descriptions of often hopeless poverty in factory cities (in two stories "Antique Shop" and "Barneby Raj" ), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) is a work of freshness and ingenuity that captures much of Dickens's journey to America around this time. Now the author of all these novels lived in a nice house with a garden in the Regentspark and received a very expensive payment for his works.
Then the famous Christmas stories appeared: "A Christmas Carol" (1843), "Bells" (written in Italy, 1844), "Cricket Behind the Hearth" (1845), "The Battle of Life" (written near Lake Geneva 1846), "Obsessed" ( 1848), as well as novels: "Dombey and Son" (1846), "David Copperfield" (1849 - 50), "Bleak House" (1852), "Hard Times" (1853), "Little Dorrit" (1855), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859), "Great Expectations" (1861), "Our Common Friend" (1864 - 65).
A number of magazine enterprises were added to this. Dickens became, in 1845, editor of the newly founded Daily News, in which he originally published his Pictures of Italy. But soon Dickens left the Daily News and in 1849 undertook the weekly Household Words, which he wanted to give a fictional and pedagogical character, and which from 1860 began to appear under the name "All the year round" and gained enormous distribution. The addition of this weekly edition was the monthly Household narratie of current events, an overview modern history. An interesting expression Dickens's personal views are his American Notes (1842), the main fruit of the above-mentioned journey, where he speaks not very favorably about the Americans and many of their institutions. Dickens also wrote A History of England for the Young (1852) and Memoirs of the Clown Grimaldi.
But too hard work began to have a detrimental effect on his health, especially since the loss of loved ones and family hardships were added to this (he separated from his wife in 1858). Extremely disastrous for his health and his public readings of his works, undertaken by him in 1858 and took place in London and in the provinces, then in Scotland and Ireland, and in 1868 - during his second trip to North America... For these readings, Dickens was showered everywhere with enormous honors and royalties, but he often felt that his forces were betraying him. A ruptured blood vessel in his brain ended his life. Dickens died at his beloved home, Gadshill Place, while working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which remained unfinished. Dickens was buried at Westminster Abbey. In the 12 years following his death, more than 4 million copies of his works were sold in England. The first complete collection of his works was started already in 1847.
English literature
Charles Dickens
Biography
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in the town of Landport, near Portsmouth. His father was a fairly wealthy official, a very frivolous man, but cheerful and good-natured, with relish taking advantage of that coziness, that comfort that every prosperous family in old England so cherished. Mr. Dickens surrounded his children and in particular his favorite Charlie with care and affection. Little Dickens inherited from his father a rich imagination, lightness of speech, apparently adding to this some seriousness in life, inherited from his mother, on whose shoulders all the everyday worries of maintaining the well-being of the family fell.
The boy's rich abilities delighted his parents, and the artistically-minded father literally tormented his son, forcing him to act out different scenes, tell his impressions, improvise, read poetry, etc. Dickens turned into little actor full of narcissism and vanity.
However, the Dickens family was suddenly ravaged to the ground. The father was thrown into a debt prison for many years, the mother had to fight poverty. A pampered, fragile health, full of fantasy, a boy in love with himself, he found himself in difficult operating conditions at a wax factory.
Throughout his subsequent life, Dickens considered this ruin of the family and this his Waxa the greatest insult to himself, an undeserved and humiliating blow. He did not like to talk about it, he even hid these facts, but here, from the bottom of his need, Dickens got his ardent love for the offended, for the needy, his understanding of their suffering, understanding of the cruelty that they meet from above, deep knowledge of the life of poverty and such terrifying social institutions, like the schools for poor children and orphanages of that time, like the exploitation of child labor in factories, like debt prisons, where he visited his father, etc. Dickens brought out of his adolescence a great, dark hatred for the rich, for the ruling classes ... A colossal ambition possessed young Dickens. The dream of rising back into the ranks of people who enjoyed wealth, the dream of outgrowing your original social place, winning wealth, pleasure, freedom - that was what worried this teenager with a shock of brown hair over a deathly pale face, with huge , burning with healthy fire, eyes.
Dickens found himself primarily as a reporter. Expanded political life, deep interest in the debates that took place in parliament, and in the events that accompanied these debates, increased the interest of the English public in the press, the number and circulation of newspapers, and the need for newspaper workers. As soon as Dickens completed several reporting tasks on trial, he was immediately noted and began to climb, the further, the more surprising his fellow reporters with irony, liveliness of presentation, and richness of language. Dickens feverishly grabbed onto newspaper work, and everything that had blossomed in him as a child and that had acquired a peculiar, somewhat painful bias at a later time, now poured out from under his pen, and he was well aware not only that by doing so he brings his ideas to the public, but also what makes his career. Literature - this is what was now a ladder for him, along which he would rise to the top of society, at the same time doing a good deed in the name of all mankind, in the name of his country, and above all and most of all in the name of the oppressed.
The first moralistic essays by Dickens, which he called "Sketches of Bose," were published in 1836. Their spirit was fully consistent with the social position of Dickens. It was to some extent a fictional declaration in the interests of the ruining petty bourgeoisie. However, these essays went almost unnoticed.
But Dickens had a dizzying success that same year with the appearance of the first chapters of his The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. A 24-year-old young man, inspired by the luck that smiled at him, by nature thirsting for happiness, fun, in this young book of his tries to completely pass by the dark sides of life. He paints old England from its most diverse sides, glorifying either her good nature, or the abundance of living and sympathetic forces in her, which chained the best sons of the petty bourgeoisie to her. He portrays old England as a good-natured, optimistic, noble old eccentric, whose name - Mr. Pickwick - has become established in world literature somewhere near the great name of Don Quixote. If Dickens had written this book of his, not a novel, but a series of comic, adventure pictures, with deep calculation, first of all, to conquer the English public, flattering it, letting it enjoy the charm of such purely English positive and negative types like Pickwick himself, the unforgettable Samuel Weller - a sage in livery, Jingle, etc., one would marvel at the fidelity of his instinct. But rather here she took her youth and the days of her first success. This success was lifted to an extraordinary height by the new work of Dickens, and he must be given justice: he immediately used that high platform, which he ascended, making the whole of England laugh colossally at the cascade of curiosities of Pickwickiada, for more serious tasks.
Two years later, Dickens performed with Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
Oliver Twist (1838) is the story of an orphan in a slum in London. The boy meets on his way baseness and nobility, criminal and respectable people. A cruel fate gives way to his sincere desire for an honest life. On the pages of the novel, pictures of the life and society of England in the 19th century are captured in all their living splendor and diversity. In this novel, Charles Dickens acts as a humanist, affirming the power of good in a person.
Dickens' fame has grown by leaps and bounds. He was seen as an ally by both the liberals, as he defended freedom, and the conservatives, as he pointed to the cruelty of the new social relations.
After traveling to America, where the public greeted Dickens with no less enthusiasm than the British, Dickens wrote his "Martin Chuzzlewit" (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843). Besides unforgettable images Pecksniff and Mrs. Gump, this novel is a wonderful parody of Americans. Much in the young capitalist country seemed to Dickens extravagant, fantastic, disorderly, and he did not hesitate to tell the Yankees a lot of truth about them. Even at the end of Dickens's stay in America, he allowed himself "tactlessness", which greatly darkened the attitude of the Americans towards him. His novel provoked violent protests from the overseas public.
But the sharp, stabbing elements of his work, Dickens was able, as already mentioned, to soften, to balance. It was easy for him, for he was also a gentle poet of the most fundamental features of the English petty bourgeoisie, which penetrated far beyond the boundaries of this class.
The cult of coziness, comfort, beautiful traditional ceremonies and customs, the cult of the family, as if embodied in a hymn for Christmas, this holiday of the philistine holidays, was expressed with amazing, exciting power in his "Christmas stories" - in 1843 the "Christmas carol" was published (A Christmas Carol, followed by The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man. Dickens did not have to bend his soul here: he himself was one of the most enthusiastic admirers of this winter holiday, during which a home fire, dear faces, solemn dishes and delicious drinks created some kind of idyll among the snows and winds of a merciless winter.
At the same time, Dickens became editor-in-chief of the Daily News. In this newspaper, he expressed his socio-political views.
All these features of Dickens's talent are vividly reflected in one of his best novels - "Dombey and Son" (Dombey and Son, 1848). The huge series of figures and life situations in this work are amazing. Dickens' fantasy, his ingenuity seem inexhaustible and superhuman. There are very few novels in world literature, which, in terms of the richness of colors and variety of tone, can be put alongside "Dombey and Son", and among these novels it is necessary to include some of the later works of Dickens himself. Both the petty-bourgeois characters and the poor were created by him with great love... All these people are almost entirely freaks. But this eccentricity that makes you laugh makes them even closer and cuter. True, this friendly, this affectionate laugh makes you not notice their narrowness, narrow-mindedness, difficult conditions in which they have to live; but such is Dickens. It must be said, however, that when he turns his thunders against the oppressors, against the arrogant merchant Dombey, against villains like his senior clerk Carker, he finds words of indignation so crushing that they really border at times on revolutionary pathos.
Even more weakened humor in the next major work of Dickens - "David Copperfield" (1849-1850). This novel is largely autobiographical. His intentions are very serious. The spirit of glorification of the old foundations of morality and family, the spirit of protest against the new capitalist England resounds loudly here too. You can relate to "David Copperfield" in different ways. Some take it so seriously that they consider it to be Dickens's greatest work.
In the 1850s. Dickens reached the zenith of his fame. He was a darling of fate - a renowned writer, ruler of thoughts and a rich man - in a word, a person for whom fate was not stingy with gifts.
The portrait of Dickens at that time was painted quite successfully by Chesterton:
Dickens was of medium height. His natural liveliness and unrepresentative appearance were the reason that he made the impression on those around him of a short man and, in any case, a very miniature build. In his youth, he wore a hat of brown hair that was too extravagant, even for that era, on his head, and later he wore a dark mustache and a thick, lush, dark goatee of such an original shape that it made him look like a foreigner.
The former transparent pallor of his face, the shine and expressiveness of his eyes remained with him, "noting the still mobile mouth of the actor and his extravagant manner of dressing." Chesterton writes about this:
He wore a velvet jacket, some incredible waistcoats that resembled in their color completely improbable sunsets, unprecedented white hats at that time, completely extraordinary whiteness that pierced the eyes. He willingly dressed up in stunning robes; they even say that he posed for a portrait in such a dress.
Behind this appearance, in which there was so much posturing and nervousness, there was a great tragedy. Dickens' needs were broader than his income. His disorderly, purely bohemian nature did not allow him to introduce any order in his affairs. Not only did he torment his rich and fertile brain, forcing him to overwork creatively, but as an unusually brilliant reader, he tried to earn huge royalties by lecturing and reading excerpts from his novels. The impression from this purely actor's reading was always colossal. Dickens appears to have been one of the greatest virtuosos of reading. But on his trips, he fell into the hands of some entrepreneurs and, earning a lot, at the same time brought himself to exhaustion.
His family life it turned out hard. Quarrels with his wife, some kind of difficult and dark relationship with her whole family, fear for sickly children made Dickens from his family more a source of constant worries and torment.
But all this is less important than the melancholic thought that overwhelmed Dickens that in essence the most serious thing in his writings - his teachings, his appeals - remains in vain, that in reality there is no hope of improving the terrible situation that was clear to him, despite humorous glasses that were supposed to soften the harsh contours of reality both for the author and for his readers. He writes at this time:
Dickens often spontaneously fell into a trance, was subject to visions and from time to time experienced states of déjà vu. Another oddity of the writer was revealed by George Henry Lewis, editor-in-chief of Fortnite Review (and close friend of the writer George Eliot). Dickens once told him that every word, before going to paper, he heard clearly at first, and his characters were constantly next to him and communicated with him. While working on the "Shop of Antiquities", the writer could neither eat nor sleep calmly: little Nell was constantly spinning underfoot, demanding attention, appealing for sympathy and jealous when the author was distracted from her by a conversation with someone from outside. While working on the novel "Martin Chazzlewitt," Dickens bored Mrs. Gump with her jokes: he had to fight her off by force. “Dickens has warned Mrs. Gump more than once that if she doesn’t learn to behave properly and doesn’t appear only on call, he will not give her another line at all!” Lewis wrote. That is why the writer loved to wander the crowded streets. "In the daytime, somehow you can still do without people," Dickens admitted in one of his letters, but in the evening I simply cannot free myself from my ghosts until I get lost from them in the crowd. " "It is perhaps the creative nature of these hallucinatory adventures that keeps us from mentioning schizophrenia as a probable diagnosis," says parapsychologist Nandor Fodor, author of The Unknown Dickens (1964, New York).
This melancholy is also imbued with the magnificent novel by Dickens "Hard Times". This novel is the most powerful literary and artistic blow to capitalism that was inflicted on it in those days, and one of the strongest that was inflicted on it in general. In its own way, the grandiose and creepy figure of Bounderby is written with genuine hatred. But Dickens is in a hurry to dissociate himself from the advanced workers.
End literary activity Dickens was also marked by a number of excellent works. The novel Little Dorrit (1855-1857) is replaced by the famous A Tale of Two Cities (1859), a historical novel by Dickens dedicated to French revolution... Dickens recoiled from her as if in madness. It was quite in the spirit of his entire worldview, and, nevertheless, he managed to create in his own way an immortal book.
The same time includes "Great Expectations" (1860) - an autobiographical novel. His hero - Pip - rushes between the desire to preserve the petty bourgeois comfort, to remain faithful to his middle peasant position and the striving upward to brilliance, luxury and wealth. Dickens put a lot of his own tosses, his own anguish into this novel. According to the original plan, the novel was supposed to end in tears, while Dickens always avoided difficult ends for his works, both out of his own good nature and knowing the tastes of his audience. For the same reasons, he did not dare to end "Great Expectations" with their complete collapse. But the entire plot of the novel clearly leads to that end.
Dickens rises to the heights of his creativity again in his swan song- in the large canvas "Our Common Friend" (1864). But this work was written as if with a desire to take a break from tense social themes. Perfectly conceived, overflowing with the most unexpected types, all sparkling with wit - from irony to touching humor - this novel should, according to the author's plan, be affectionate, sweet, funny. His tragic characters are brought out as if only for variety and largely in the background. It all ends perfectly. The villains themselves turn out to be either wearing a villainous mask, sometimes so petty and ridiculous that we are ready to forgive them for their treachery, or so unhappy that they excite acute pity instead of anger.
In this its the last piece Dickens gathered all the strength of his humor, hiding the wonderful, funny, cute images of this idyll from the melancholy that took possession of him. Apparently, however, this melancholy should have poured over us again in Dickens's detective novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This novel was begun with great skill, but where it was supposed to lead and what its intention was, we do not know, because the work remained unfinished. On June 9, 1870, fifty-eight-year-old Dickens, not old in years, but exhausted by colossal work, a rather disorderly life and many all kinds of troubles, dies in Gadeshill from a stroke.
Dickens' fame continued to grow after his death. He was turned into a true god of English literature. His name began to be called next to the name of Shakespeare, his popularity in England in the 1880s and 1890s. overshadowed the glory of Byron. But the critic and the reader tried not to notice his angry protests, his peculiar martyrdom, his tosses among the contradictions of life. They did not understand and did not want to understand that humor was often for Dickens a shield from the overly wounding blows of life. On the contrary, Dickens acquired first of all the fame of the jolly writer of jolly old England. Dickens is a great humorist - this is what you will hear first of all from the lips of ordinary Englishmen from the most diverse classes of this country.
Title page of the first volume of the Complete Works (1892)
Translations of Dickens's works appeared in Russian in the late 1830s. In 1838, excerpts from the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club appeared in print, and later stories from the Essays by Bose cycle were translated. All of his great novels have been translated several times, and all small works have been translated, and even not belonging to him, but edited by him as an editor. Dickens was translated by V. A. Solonitsyn ("The Life and Adventures of the English Gentleman Mr. Nikolai Nickleby, with a truthful and reliable Description of successes and failures, rises and falls, in a word, the full career of his wife, children, relatives and the whole family of the aforementioned gentleman", "Library for reading ", 1840), O. Senkovsky (" Library for reading "), A. Kroneberg (" Christmas stories Dickens "," Contemporary ", 1847 No. 3 - retelling with translation of excerpts; the story "The Battle of Life", ibid.) and I. I. Vvedensky ("Dombey and the Son", "Contract with a Ghost", "Memorial Notes of the Pickwick Club", "David Copperfield"); later - Z. Zhuravskaya (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1895; Without a Way Out, 1897), VL Rantsov, M. A. Shishmareva (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Hard Times and others) , E. G. Beketova (abridged translation of "David Copperfield" and others) and others.
The characteristic that Chesterton gives to Dickens is close to the truth: “Dickens was a vivid exponent,” writes this English writer, who is in many ways related to him, “a kind of mouthpiece for the general inspiration, impulse and intoxicating enthusiasm that seized England, calling everyone to high goals. His best writings are a rapturous hymn to freedom. All his work shines with the reflected light of the revolution. "
Charles Dickens's prose is permeated with wit, which influenced the originality of the national character and way of thinking, known in the world as "English humor"
Dickens Charles (1812-1870) - English writer. Born February 7, 1812 in the city of Landport in the family of a wealthy official. The elder Dickens was very fond of his children, and in Charles he saw acting talent and made him act out acting roles or read piece of art... But soon Charles's father was arrested for debts and thrown into prison for many years, and the family had to fight poverty. Young Dickens had to attend a school for poor children and work in a wax factory.
At this time, the debate in the English Parliament was aroused great public interest, so the demand for newspaper workers increased. Dickens completed test assignments and went to work as a reporter.
The first publication of "Essays by Bose" with an expressed protest from the ruined petty bourgeoisie in 1836 did not arouse the interest of readers. In the same year, the initial chapters of The Pickwick Papers, which had great success among the British, were published.
After 2 years, Dickens published Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. He becomes a popular writer.
After a trip to America, where there were also many admirers of his talent, Dickens wrote the novel "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1843) with a certain ironic description of American society. This book drew a lot of negative criticism from the overseas state.
The writer portrayed a special relationship to Christmas in 1843 in Christmas Stories. In the same year, Dickens became editor-in-chief of the Daily News, where he expressed his political views.
In the 1850s. Dickens is the most famous and wealthiest writer in England. But his family life was not easy, as he often quarreled with his wife and worried about sickly children.
In 1860, the autobiographical novel Great Expectations was published, which he graduated on a positive note, like most of his works. But melancholy began to overcome him. Sometimes the writer could be in a state of trance, seeing visions. In 1870, Dickens began writing the detective novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but did not manage to finish it.
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