Chapter Dermody to Dickens of D by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

he wrote The Chimes, followed by The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. In January, 1846, he was appointed first edition of The Daily News, but resigned in a few weeks. The same year he went to Switzerland, and while there wrote Dombey and Son, which was published in 1848, and was immediately followed by his masterpiece, David Copperfield (1849-50). Shortly before this he had become manager of a theatrical company, which performed in the provinces, and he had in 1849 started his magazine, Household Words. Bleak House appeared in 1852-53, Hard Times in 1854, and Little Dorrit 1856-57. In 1856 he bought Gadshill Place, which, in 1860, became his permanent home. In 1858 he began his public readings from his works, which, while eminently successful from a financial point of view, from the nervous strain they entailed on him gradually broke down his constitution, and hastened his death. In the same year he separated from his wife, and consequent upon the controversy which arose thereupon he brought Household Words to an end, and started All the Year Round, in which appeared A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860-61). Our Mutual Friend came out in numbers (1864-65). Dickens was now in the full tide of his readings, and decided to give a course of them in America. Thither accordingly he went in the end of 1867, returning in the following May. He had a magnificent reception, and his profits amounted to £20,000; but the effect on his health was such that he was obliged, on medical advice, finally to abandon all appearances of the kind. In 1869 he began his last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was interrupted by his death from an apoplectic seizure on June 8, 1870.

One of Dicken’s most marked characteristics is the extraordinary wealth of his invention as exhibited in the number and variety of the characters introduced into his novels. Another, especially, of course, in his earlier works, is his boundless flow of animal spirits. Others are his marvellous keenness of observation and his descriptive power. And the English race may well, with Thackeray, be “grateful for the innocent laughter, and the sweet and unsullied pages which the author of David Copperfield gives to [its] children.” On the other hand, his faults are obvious, a tendency to caricature, a mannerism that often tires, and almost disgusts, fun often forced, and pathos not seldom degenerating into mawkishness. But at his best how rich and genial is the humour, how tender often the pathos. And when all deductions are made, he had the laughter and tears of the English-speaking world at command for a full generation while he lived, and that his spell still works is proved by a continuous succession of new editions.

Summary.—Born 1812, parliamentary reporter circa 1835, published Sketches by Boz 1836, Pickwick 1837-39, and his other novels almost continuously until his death, visited America 1841, started Household Words 1849, and All the Year Round 1858, when also he began his public readings, visiting America again in 1867, died 1870.

Life by John Foster (1872), Letters edited by Miss Hogarth (1880-82). Numerous Lives and Monographs by Sala, F. T. Marzials (Great Writers Series), A. W. Ward (Men of Letters Series), F. G. Kitton, G. K. Chesterton, etc.