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      Charles Dickens powerfully interested in various reforms.

 

       When we compare Dickens's life and work with that of Tennyson and Browining, we will find the contrast was startling, while Tennyson and Browing were being educated for the life of literature and being protected from the hardships of the world.  Dickens, a poor, obsure, suffering child, had to support his family by pasting lalels on blacking bottles, sleeping under a counter like a homeless cat, and once a week timidly approaching the big prison where his father was confined for debts.

 

His Life:

     I. 2nd of 8 kinds.

     Dickens was the second of eight poor children, and his father was a minor official in the navy, who could hardly make both ends meet, when Dickens was nine years old, the family moved to London, but debts still pursued his father and then he ended up in the prison for debts.  At 11, Dickens was taken out of school and went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory, he worked from dawn till dark just for a few pennies.   Then a small legacy ended his wretchedness, bringing his father from the prison and sending the boy to Wellington House Academy, but this was a brutal, worthless school, where her leamed little.  At 15, he left the school again, but this time he worked as a clerk in a lawyer's office, by night, he studied shorghand, intending to reporter.  At23, he publishe"Sketches by Boz," his first book.  "Pickwick Papers" his best known work was published serially in 1836-1837, Dickens's fame and fortune were made.  "Pickweick Papers" was rapidly followed by "Olive Twist,"which contains a large amount of autobiography. He supplied his school days for "Nicholas Nickleby;" His visits to the Marshal sea, a place where his father was imprisoned, for "Little dorrit; " His life in a lawyer's office for"Bleak House." Money poured into his pocket from thses novels.  In 1842, while still a young man, he was invited to visit the United States and Canada.  He was received as the guest of the nation, at that time American was a huge fairyland, Dickens recorded his impressions in American Notes and martin Chuzzlewit.  But these two books struck a false note, and he began to lose something of his popularity, besides, he spent more than he earned, his domestic life became more and moe irritating until he separated from his wife in 1858. He journeyed to Italy, but was disappoined, he then turned back to London Streets.  He died in 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

     I. His puppose novels

      We should note that most of Dickens's novels belong to the class of purpose novels or problem novels, for example, his"Bleak House" attacks the "law's delay; " "Little Dorrit" attacks the injustice which persecutes the poor debtors; "Nicholas Nickleby" attacks the abuses of charity school and the brutal school teacher. "Oliver twist" deals with the unnecessary degradation of the poor in English workhouses. "The Old Curiostity Shop" deals with the evil of gambling and the effect it can have on the individual. "Martin Chuzzlewit" deals with selfishness as a central theme. "Hard Times" deals with the grinding existence of industrial workers.  "Great Expectations" attacks snobbishness and ingratitude.

      "A Tale of Two Cities" is the result of Dickens's reading of Carlyle's the "French Revolution." "David Copperfield" offers us a glimpse of Dickens' boyhood and family. "Pickwick Papers" is just a novel for fun.

      Dickens wrote some Christmas Stories, such as "Christmas Carol," "The Chimnes" "The Cricket on the Hearth." It is due to the help of thsees stories that Christmas has become in all English -countries a season of gladness, a season of gift giving, a season of remembering those less fortunate than ourselves.