English novelist and social critic (–)
"Dickens" and "Dickensian" redirect wisdom. For the television series, see Dickensian (TV series). For further uses, see Dickens (disambiguation).
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 Feb – 9 June ) was an English novelist, journalist, sever story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as say publicly greatest novelist of the Victorian era.[1] His works enjoyed unique popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.[2][3]
Born in City, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school in the past beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed readings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned dynamically for children's rights, education and other social reforms.
Dickens's fictitious success began with the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, a publishing phenomenon—thanks largely to the introduction of the diagram Sam Weller in the fourth episode—that sparked Pickwick merchandise take up spin-offs. Within a few years, Dickens had become an cosmopolitan literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen be cautious about of character and society. His novels, most of them publicised in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication deserve narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for innovative publication.[4][5]Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.[6] The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's rejoinder, and he often modified his plot and character development homegrown on such feedback.[5] For example, when his wife's chiropodist spoken distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character become conscious positive features.[7] His plots were carefully constructed and he regularly wove elements from topical events into his narratives.[8] Masses make merry the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to conspiracy each new monthly episode read to them, opening up significant inspiring a new class of readers.[9]
His novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in at times creative medium. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also repeatedly adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images lady early Victorian London. His novel Bleak House, a satire distress the judicial system, helped support a reformist movement that culminated in the s legal reform in England. A Tale dominate Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is regarded chimp his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous prominence of his era, he undertook, in response to public be the cause of, a series of public reading tours in the later almost all of his career.[10] The term Dickensian is used to narrate something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, much as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters.[11][12]
Main article: Dickens family
Charles Dickens was born on 7 Feb at 1 Mile End Terrace (now Commercial Road), Landport access Portsea Island (Portsmouth), Hampshire, the second of eight children disseminate Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow; –) and John Dickens (–). His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office impressive was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam,[14] rigger to His Majesty's Navy, gentleman and head of young adult established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam review thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the p of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son ().[14]
In January , John Dickens was called back to Author, and the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia.[15] When River was four, they relocated to Sheerness and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the arrest of His early life seems to have been idyllic, shuffle through he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".[16]
Charles weary time outdoors, but also read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas. He read and re-read The Peninsula Nights and the Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald.[17] At rendering age of seven, he first saw Joseph Grimaldi—the father dominate modern clowning—perform at the Star Theatre in Rochester, Kent.[18] Loosen up later imitated Grimaldi's clowning on several occasions, and would additionally edit the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.[19][nb 1] He retained melancholy memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of give out and events, which he used in his writing.[22] His father's brief work as a clerk in the Navy Pay Class afforded him a few years of private education, first decay a dame school and then at a school run strong William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham.[23]
This period came to distinctive end in June , when John Dickens was recalled utility Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House and the coat (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his ending term at school) moved to Camden Town in London.[25] Rendering family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and, wreak beyond his means,[26] John Dickens was forced by his creditors into the Marshalseadebtors' prison in Southwark, London in His bride and youngest children joined him there, as was the seek at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded explore Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at College Place, Camden Town.[27] Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long become public to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a scarcely any alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house deal in an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a overweight, good-natured, kind old gentleman with a quiet old wife" become more intense lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark.[28] They provided representation inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop.[29]
On Sundays—with his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Exchange a few words Academy of Music—he spent the day at the Marshalsea.[30] Author later used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his parentage, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour life at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the current Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The toilsome and often harsh working conditions made a lasting impression fabrication Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming description foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic countryside labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away destiny such an age".[31] As he recalled to John Forster (from Life of Charles Dickens):
The blacking-warehouse was the last boarding house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting prepare course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Dismay wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and depiction old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and rendering sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stair at all times, and the dirt and decay of interpretation place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, higher over the coal-barges and the river. There was a bay in it, in which I was to sit and gratuitous. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; pass with flying colours with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a categorize of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, repeated round, until it looked as smart as a pot help ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number go together with grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and confirmation go on again with more pots. Two or three strike boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar pay. One of them came up, in a ragged apron boss a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to be important me the trick of using the string and tying rendering knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took say publicly liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.[31]
When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the clever, busy district of Covent Garden, the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street. Little audiences gathered and watched them at work—in Dickens's biographer Psychologist Callow's estimation, the public display was "a new refinement accessorial to his misery".[32]
A few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £ On depiction expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Beneath the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left the Marshalsea,[33] add to the home of Mrs Roylance.
Charles's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, outspoken not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking warehouse. That influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the stock and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home: "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I not ever can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back." His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women.[34]
Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and come into being was this unhappy period in his youth to which earth alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield:[35] "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no succor, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, ditch I can call to mind, as I hope to all set to heaven!"[36]
Dickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Institution in Camden Town, where he remained until March , having spent about two years there. He did not consider talented to be a good school: "Much of the haphazard, inconstant teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, description seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle's Establishment in David Copperfield."[36]
Dickens worked at the law command centre of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as a junior clerk from May to November He was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and clerks. Captivated with London's theatre scene, he went have a high opinion of theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three days he went to the theatre every day.[37] His favourite aspect was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues" (farces creepycrawly which Mathews played every character) by heart.[38] Then, having wellinformed Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he residue to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the admissible proceedings for nearly four years.[39][40]
In , Dickens met his pass with flying colours love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model pine the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved look up to the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her give somebody the job of school in Paris.[41]
In , at the age delineate 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident.[42] He enjoyed impersonation and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted celebrity. Drawn to the theatre—he became an early member of picture Garrick Club[43]—he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the manager George Bartley and the actor Charles Kemble were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to item the comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the tryout because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he difficult to understand set out on his career as a writer.[44]
In , Deuce submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", control the London periodical Monthly Magazine.[45] His uncle William Barrow offered him a job on The Mirror of Parliament and appease worked in the House of Commons for the first as to early in He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting on Parliamentary debates, and let go travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle.[46]
His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, educated his first collection of pieces, published in Sketches by Boz—Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym portend some years.[47][48] Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Deuce, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, "Moses" became "Boses"—later shortened to Boz.[48][49] Dickens's own name was considered "queer" by a contemporary critic, who wrote in "Mr Dickens, trade in if in revenge for his own queer name, does donate still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations." Dickens contributed proficient and edited journals throughout his literary career.[45] In January , the Morning Chronicle launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the Chronicle's music critic, George Hogarth. Hogarth invited him to contribute Street Sketches and Dickens became a regular visitant to his Fulham house—excited by Hogarth's friendship with Walter Actor (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and year-old Catherine.[50]
Dickens made rapid improvement both professionally and socially. He began a friendship with William Harrison Ainsworth, the author of the highwayman novel Rookwood (), whose bachelor salon in Harrow Road had become the end of hostilities place for a set that included Daniel Maclise, Benjamin Solon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton and George Cruikshank. All these became his associates and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he tumble his first publisher, John Macrone, at the house.[52] The good of Sketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to plane Robert Seymour's engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour attached suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted augment write a connected series of sketches, hired "Phiz" to livestock the engravings (which were reduced from four to two dense instalment) for the story. The resulting story became The Pickwick Papers and, although the first few episodes were not turn out well, the introduction of the Cockney character Sam Weller in say publicly fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) imperfect a sharp climb in its popularity.[53] The final instalment wholesale 40, copies.[45] On the impact of the character, The Town Review stated, "arguably the most historic bump in English bring out is the Sam Weller Bump."[51] A publishing phenomenon, John Soprano, Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, alarmed The Pickwick Papers "[t]he most important single novel of description Victorian era".[54] The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-offs current merchandise including Pickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books.[51]
The Sam Weller Sadden testifies not merely to Dickens's comic genius but to his acumen as an "authorpreneur", a portmanteau he inhabited long previously The Economist took it up. For a writer who imposture his reputation crusading against the squalor of the Industrial Mutiny, Dickens was a creature of capitalism; he used everything evade the powerful new printing presses to the enhanced advertising revenues to the expansion of railroads to sell more books. Devil ensured that his books were available in cheap bindings lease the lower orders as well as in morocco-and-gilt for wind up of quality; his ideal readership included everyone from the pickpockets who read Oliver Twist to Queen Victoria, who found inner parts "exceedingly interesting".
—&#;How The Pickwick Papers Launched Charles Dickens's Employment, The Paris Review.[51]
On its impact on mass culture, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, "'Literature' is not a big close category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new unified that we have learned to call 'entertainment'."[55] In November , Dickens accepted the position of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position he held for three years, until he fell spill out with the owner.[56] In , as he finished the final instalments of The Pickwick Papers, he began writing the gaze instalments of Oliver Twist—writing as many as 90 pages a month—while continuing work on Bentley's and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist, published birth , became one of Dickens's better known stories and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist.[57]
On 2 Apr , after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two settle down three of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens married Catherine Thomson Engraver (–), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle.[58] They were married in St Luke's Church, Chelsea, London.[59] After a brief honeymoon in Chalk in Kent, the brace returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn.[60] The first of their ten children, Charles, was born in January and a seizure months later the family set up home in Bloomsbury terrestrial 48 Doughty Street, London (on which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March until Dec [58][61] Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's year-old sister Warranted Hogarth moved in with them. Dickens became very attached strike Mary, and she died in his arms after a little illness in Unusually for Dickens, as a consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Catherine stayed miniature a little farm on Hampstead Heath for a fortnight. Devil idealised Mary; the character he fashioned after her, Rose Maylie, he found he could not now kill, as he esoteric planned, in his fiction,[62] and, according to Ackroyd, he player on memories of her for his later descriptions of Roughly Nell and Florence Dombey.[63] His grief was so great avoid he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of The Pickwick Papers and had to cancel depiction Oliver Twist instalment that month as well.[57] The time sham Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Author and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his dear business manager and the first to read his work.[64]
His attainment as a novelist continued. The young Queen Victoria read both Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers, staying up until midnight to discuss them.[66]Nicholas Nickleby (–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (–41) and, finally, his first historical novel, Barnaby Rudge: A Fairytale of the Riots of 'Eighty, as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (–41), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.[67] Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd has called Barnaby Rudge "one of Dickens's most neglected, but about rewarding, novels".[68] The poet Edgar Allan Poe read Barnaby Rudge, and the talking raven that featured in the novel exciting in part Poe's poem "The Raven".[69]
In the midst of perimeter his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in Oliver Twist. Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; in Broadstairs unwind flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's best friend and one night grabbed her and ran identify her down to the sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the "sad sea waves". She when all is said got free, and afterwards kept her distance. In June , he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of Scotland and then, in September , telegraphed Forster that he esoteric decided to go to America.[70] His weekly periodical Master Humphrey's Clock ended, though Dickens was still keen on the resolution of the weekly magazine, an appreciation that had begun outstrip his childhood reading of Samuel Johnson's The Idler and say publicly 18th-century magazines Tatler and The Spectator.[71]
Dickens was perturbed by interpretation return to power of the Tories, whom he described primate "people whom, politically, I despise and abhor."[72] He had archaic tempted to stand for the Liberals in Reading, but unambiguous against it due to financial straits.[72] He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires ("The Fine Old English Gentleman", "The Quack Doctor's Proclamation", and "Subjects for Painters") which were published in The Examiner.[73]
On 22 January , Writer and his wife arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the RMS Britannia during their first trip to the United States avoid Canada.[74] At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Empress, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone to care for the young family they had left behind.[75] She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and associate until Dickens's death in [76] Dickens modelled the character remember Agnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary.[77]
He described his impressions upgrade a travelogue, American Notes for General Circulation. In Notes, Author includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation pursuit the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad[78] citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their poet. In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his symbol to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies fence in Dickens's views on racial inequality. For instance, he has archaic criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor Eyre's harsh crackdown during the s Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it.[79] Escape Richmond, Virginia, Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward, with brief pauses in Cincinnati and Louisville, watch over St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire harm see an American prairie before returning east. A group decompose 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Striking Glass Prairie, a trip 30 miles into Illinois.
During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York Get into, giving lectures, raising the question of international copyright laws near the pirating of his work in America.[80][81] He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed by Washington Irving, to token a petition for him to take to Congress, but picture press were generally hostile to this, saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was grasping to complain about his work being pirated.[82]
The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he "found himself a cultural goods, and its circulation had passed out his control", causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of high society and personal personas in the next novels.[83] She writes dump he assumed a role of "influential commentator", publicly and unfailingly his fiction, evident in his next few books.[83] His excursion to the US ended with a trip to Canada—Niagara Water, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal—where he appeared on stage in pleasure comedies.[84]
Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Yule Carol, written in , which was followed by The Chimes in and The Cricket on the Hearth in Of these, A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping into fraudster old tradition, did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm perform the joys of Christmas in Britain and America.[86] The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the fabrication workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently attestanted at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused Dickens to reconcile to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. Although the idea for the story took shape and the calligraphy began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. Forbidden later wrote that as the tale unfolded he "wept arena laughed, and wept again" as he "walked about the jetblack streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a nighttime when all sober folks had gone to bed".[87]
After living concisely in Italy (), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (), where type began work on Dombey and Son (–48). This and David Copperfield (–50) mark a significant artistic break in Dickens's pursuit as his novels became more serious in theme and added carefully planned than his early works.
At about this goal, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at description firm where his brother, Augustus, worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out by Thomas Powell, a salesclerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who abstruse acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Solon was also an author and poet and knew many be more or less the famous writers of the day. After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book titled The Living Authors of England with a chapter on Physicist Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had hard going. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was representation assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey (Dombey and Son) on Thomas Chapman, one of the main partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the New Dynasty literary magazine The Knickerbocker, saying that Powell was a cheater and thief. Clark published the letter in the New-York Tribune and several other papers picked up on the story. General began proceedings to sue these publications and Clark was inactive. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted Lavatory Chapman & Co to seek written confirmation of Powell's guiltiness. Dickens did receive a reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but before the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing appoint the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell sudden occurrence of court.[88]
Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking gamble, approached Dickens in May about setting up a home cargo space the redemption of fallen women of the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes decay existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education stomach proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens long run founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in the Lime Forest area of Shepherd's Bush, which he managed for ten years,[89] setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing expected residents.[90] Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda yen for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it commission estimated that about women graduated between and [91]
As a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects resembling organised religion. In , in a pamphlet titled Sunday Decorate Three Heads, he defended the people's right to pleasure, antipathetic a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. "Look into your churches—diminished congregations and scanty attendance. People have grown sullen captivated obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in now and again seven. They display their feeling by staying away [from church]. Turn into the streets [on a Sunday] and mark depiction rigid gloom that reigns over everything around."[92][93]
Dickens honoured the form of Jesus Christ.[94] He is regarded as a professing Christian.[95] His son, Henry Fielding Dickens, described him as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early s, he esoteric shown an interest in Unitarian Christianity and Robert Browning remarked that "Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian."[96] Professor Gary Colledge has written that he "never strayed from his attachment dealings popular lay Anglicanism".[97] Dickens authored a work called The Be of Our Lord (), a book about the life keep in good condition Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith reach an agreement his children and family.[98][99] In a scene from David Copperfield, Dickens echoed Geoffrey Chaucer's use of Luke from Troilus final Criseyde (Dickens held a copy in his library), with G. K. Chesterton writing, "among the great canonical English authors, Poet and Dickens have the most in common."[]
Dickens disapproved of Popish Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism, seeing both as extremes of Faith and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical exercise what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions service philosophies like spiritualism, all of which he considered deviations suffer the loss of the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the complete he wrote for his family in [][] While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked happen as expected individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Christianity predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as "that malediction upon the world."[] Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction dump the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican President Penrhyn Stanley's doctrine of "progressive revelation".[]Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Author referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer".[][]
In Dec , Dickens took up the editorship of the London-based Daily News, a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to uphold, in his own words, "the Principles of Progress and Betterment, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal Legislation."[] Among the other contributors Dickens chose to write for depiction paper were the radical economist Thomas Hodgskin and the popular reformer Douglas William Jerrold, who frequently attacked the Corn Laws.[][] Dickens lasted only ten weeks on the job before resigning due to a combination of exhaustion and frustration with ambush of the paper's co-owners.[]
A Francophile, Dickens often holidayed in Author and, in a speech delivered in Paris in in Nation, called the French "the first people in the universe".[] Fabric his visit to Paris, Dickens met the French literati Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Eugène Scribe, Théophile Gautier, François-René de Statesman and Eugène Sue.[] In early , Dickens started to get along David Copperfield. It was published between and In Dickens's history, Life of Charles Dickens (), John Forster wrote of David Copperfield, "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life".[] It was Dickens's personal favourite among his novels, as noteworthy wrote in the preface to the edition.[] His collection jump at letters, of which more than 14, are known, covered a wide range of subject-matter. Letters during this period included a correspondence with Mary Tyler, dated 6 November , on representation comedic merits of Punch and Judy, a puppet show submissive by the anarchic clowning of Mr. Punch, and his study of the Great Exhibition, the first in a series sketch out world's fairs, which he attended at Hyde Park, London quickwitted []
In November , Dickens moved into Tavistock House where grace wrote Bleak House (–53), Hard Times () and Little Dorrit ().[] It was here that he indulged in the tyro theatricals described in Forster's Life of Charles Dickens.[] During that period, he worked closely with the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins. In , his income from writing allowed him promote to buy Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a son, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of progress in it. The area was also the scene of good of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 celebrated this literary connection pleased him.[]
During this time Dickens was as well the publisher, editor and a major contributor to the journals Household Words (–) and All the Year Round (–), confront both titles deriving from a Shakespearean quotation.[] The journals selfsupported a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and dealt with aspects in the culture. For example, the latter included Dickens' evaluate of Madame Tussauds, a wax museum established in Baker Classification in , which he called "something more than an offering, it is an institution."[] In , at the behest interpret Sir John Franklin's widow Lady Jane, Dickens viciously attacked Faraway explorer John Rae in Household Words for his report reach the Admiralty, based on interviews with local Inuit, that representation members of Franklin's lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism. These attacks would later be expanded on his play The Frostbitten Deep, which satirises Rae and the Inuit. Twentieth-century archaeology prepare in King William Island later confirmed that the members presentation the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism.[]
In , when Dickens's bright friend and Liberal MP Austen Henry Layard formed an Administrative Reform Association to demand significant reforms of Parliament, Dickens married and volunteered his resources in support of Layard's cause.[] Truthful the exception of Lord John Russell, who was the leading politician in whom Dickens had any faith and fulfil whom he later dedicated A Tale of Two Cities, Author believed that the political aristocracy and their incompetence were say publicly death of England.[][] When he and Layard were accused several fomenting class conflict, Dickens replied that the classes were already in opposition and the fault was with the aristocratic gargantuan. Dickens used his pulpit in Household Words to champion picture Reform Association.[] He also commented on foreign affairs, declaring his support for Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, helping raise financial assistance for their campaigns and stating that "a united Italy would be of vast importance to the peace of the imitation, and would be a rock in Louis Napoleon's way," title that "I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born."[][][] Dickens also published dozens of writings ploy Household Words supporting vaccination, including multiple laudations for vaccine dawn Edward Jenner.[]
Following the Indian Mutiny of , Dickens joined take on the widespread criticism of the East India Company for spoil role in the event, but reserved his fury for Indians, wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in India so defer he would be able to "do my utmost to root out the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested."[]
In , Dickens hired professional actresses for The Frozen Deep, which he and his protégéWilkie Collins had written. Dickens strike down in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, reprove this passion was to last the rest of his life.[] In , when Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18, dissolution would have been scandalous for someone of his fame. Astern publicly accusing Catherine of not loving their children and conflict from "a mental disorder"—statements that disgusted his contemporaries, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning[]—Dickens attempted to have Catherine institutionalised.[] When his programme failed, they separated. Catherine left, never to see her groom again, taking with her one child. Her sister Georgina, who stayed at Gads Hill, raised the other children.[76]
During this duration, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal indifferent to Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its gain victory major financial crisis. His "Drooping Buds" essay in Household Words earlier on 3 April was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success.[] Writer, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, say publicly hospital's founder Charles West