Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

The greatness of Charles Dickens is of a peculiar kind. He was, at the same time, the great popular entertainer and the great artist, his greatness and his popular appeal being inseparable. The reasons for this lie deep in the man's nature. He was a born orator and actor. His lifelong enthusiasm for amateur dramatics and the maniacal intensity with which he read aloud his own works were both significant. He was never a pure artist. Like a great political orator, he drew strength from his audience; he delighted to please them, he accepted the validity of their judgement.

So, Dickens was in many respects the ordinary English man of the middle class transformed by a unique unrepeatable genius. In his own person he fulfilled and exemplified many dominant myths of the mid-19^th century. He was a self-made man, like the heroes of the immensely popular and influential Samuel Smiles. Without proper education, without a loving and secure home, he had made himself a household name by the time he was in his early twenties. In an age more notable perhaps than any other for deep feeling about childhood, he had been a rejected child, forced to find his own lodgings and earn his own living by the time he was 10 years old.

Then he was typical of his great middle-class public in being a practical man of the world, not particularly bookish, with a double share of the extraordinary exuberant energy and humour of that expansive age. Like his public he was a bit of a philistine; his views on art were much nearer to those of the crowds than they were to those of John Ruskin.

Like his public, too, he was interested in reform. Like them, he was very certain that reform should work in the direction of reducing aristocratic privilege; like them, he was much more dubious about extending middle-class privileges to those lower down. Like them he was very keen on a strong police force and the prevention of crime and like them he took an unholy delight in the breathless drama of a murder story. Like other popular writers he was deeply melodramatic, but there was nothing cynical or calculating in this. In expressing their aspirations, fears and prejudices he was simply expressing himself.

Dickens was a man of obsessions, which can be traced all through his work. He was haunted by the idea of the lonely child, because he had been one. He was haunted by the idea of the prison because his father had been in the debtors' prison. He was deeply obsessed by the thought of violence. These themes occur constantly, but this does not make his work repetitive. His development consists partly in the perpetual deepening of these themes. The prison of Pickwick Papers is the same debtors' prison as the one in Little Dorrit (and the same in which his own father was confined), but as literary experiences the two could hardly be more different, and the latter one is immensely the more brilliant and profound. Occasionally, two of his obsessions meet in the same passage, such as the burning of the prison by the mob in Barnaby Rudge (prison and violence) or the exclusion of Dorrit at night from her only home, the Marshalsea prison (prison and lonely child) and such passages often have a particularly intense power or pathos.

Balancing this constant recurrence of the same facts and ideas, we have his extraordinary inventiveness, variety, and mastery of significant detail. His world is fuller and richer than other novelists' worlds. His imagination finds poetry, humour, and significance in the most ordinary things. That physically filthy Victorian London, which struck intelligent foreign visitors as almost a hell on earth, was his natural home as man and artist. He drew strength and inspiration from his long solitary walks (often at night) through the dingiest and strangest areas. His pathos, his wild, extravagant humour, his zeal for reform, his serious indignation was all rooted in this vision of the strangest city in the world, and the one with most bizarre contrasts.

In general one may say that in his early works, up to about 1845, his exuberance, whether comic or melodramatic, predominates. Plots are widely improbable; coincidences abound; deeds often lack their natural outcome. At times we seem to be almost in the world of fairy-tale, not about princesses, but about orphans and chimney-sweeps.

Dombey and Son (1848) is a land-mark of change. The old features are still present in some degree, but so are those that became more and more dominant in his later work, psychological insight, serious thought about society, and above all a sense of the consequences of things and of the complexity of moral choices. In Nicholas Nickleby, an early work, two philantropical brothers diffuse joy and peace all round them by giving away their money. In Our Mutual Friend, his last completed novel, Boffin, a kindly man anxious to do good with his large fortune, finds himself thwarted and deceived, and unable to produce beneficial effects. The later books are in places just as funny as the earlier. But the humour is more satirical, even savage. The soaring, high-spirited nonsense of Pickwick is gone. Finally we would stress the inexhaustible variety of Dickens. In him alone among later English writers, we can, without absurdity, find a likeness to the fecundity of Shakespeare.

In short Dickens may be described as a humanitarian novelist and journalist. His literary activity may be structured in four main periods of creation.

Experimental period

1. Sketches by Boz (1834-1836) is a series of short papers having descriptive value and appealing primarily because of their humour.

2. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the one novel of Dickens that abounds neither in pathetic, grewsome, nor dramatic passages. It is pure fun from beginning to end, with a laugh of every page. It was published in 1836, and aided by the clever illustrations of Hablot Brown, or "Phizi", it attained immediate success and laid the foundations of Dickens' fame. The types illustrated are caricatures, but nevertheless they are types: Mr. Pickwick, the genial, unsophisticated founder of the club; and that masterly array of endicrous individuals drawn from all classes high or low.

Although the whole book is exaggerated comedy, there is no other that has furnished more characters universally known, or given to common English speech more current phrases. Many sayings and events are still in the "Pickwickian sense"; Sam Weller and his admirable father are still quoted; Mrs. Leo Hunter is still a feature in social life; Bardell trials occur occasionally; and there are many clubs as wise as Pickwick's.

Second Period

1.Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839) with the object of showing "the principle of good surviving through adverse circumstance" attacked the abuses of the Poor Law and exposed the workhouse system.

The story shows in vivid colours the miseries of the pauper's home where the inmates are robbed and starved, while the dead are hurried into unhonoured graves; the haunt of villains and thieves where the wretched poor are purposely made criminals by those who have sinned past hope; and one wrong-doing is used to force the victim deeper in vice. With such lives are interwoven those of a better sort, showing how men and women in all grades have power on others for good or ill.

Oliver Twist - so called because the workhouse master has just reached the letter "T" in naming the waifs - was born in the poorhouse, where his mother's wanderings ceased for ever. When the hungry lad asked for more of the too thin gruel he was whipped. Bound out to work, he runs away from his slavery and goes to pickpocket's school. But he will not steal. He finds a home. He is kidnapped and forced to be again with the bad ones, and to act as helper to Sykes the robber in house-breaking. Nancy's womanly heart, (bad enough her life may be) works to set him free.

Once more good people shelter him, rescuing him without assistance of the Bow Street officers, who make brave talk. The kind old scholar, Mr. Brownlow, is the good genius that opens before him a way to liberty and a life suited to his nature. The excitable country doctor deceives the police, and saves Oliver for an honest career. The eccentric Mr. Grimwig should not be overlooked. The mystery of his mother's fate is solved, and he finds a sister. Although the innocent and less guilty suffer, the conscious wrong-doers are, after much scheming and actual sin, made to give back the stolen, repair - if such can be - the evil done, and pay the penalty of transgression. They bring ruin to their own heads. There are about twenty prominent characters, each the type of its kind, in this life drama; separate scenes of which we may, as it were, read in our daily papers, so real are they. The author says that as romance had made vice to shine with pleasure, so his purpose was to show crime in its repulsive truth.

1) Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), where Dickens becomes again a social reformer, one of his principal purposes being to expose the "farming" schools of Yorkshire and their severe mistreatment of children.

2) The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), not his best novel, but among his most celebrated in which not the plot but the central figure of Little Nell has made it popular.

3) Barnaby Rudge (1841) is frequently called a historical novel, although all the characters, except Lord Gordon, are imaginary. The plot is extremely intricate. Barnaby is a poor half-witted boy, living in London toward the close of the 18^th century, with his mother and his raven Grip. His father had been the steward of a country gentleman named Haredale, who was found murdered in hid bed, while both his steward and his gardener had disappeared.

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The body of the steward, recognizable only by the clothes, is presently found in a pond. Barnaby is born the day after the double murder. Affectionate and morally docile, credulous and full of fantastic imaginings, a simpleton but faithful, he grows up to be liked and trusted. His mother having fled to London to escape a mysterious blackmailer, he becomes involved in the famous (No Popery) riots of Lord George Gordon in 1780, and is within an ace of perishing on the scaffold. The blackmailer, Mr. Haredale the brother and Emma, the daughter of the murdered man, Emma's lover, Edward Chester, and his father, are the chief figures of the nominal plot; but the real interest is not with them but with the side characters and episodes. Some of the most whimsical and amusing of Dickens's character studies appear in the pages of the novel; while the whole episode of the gathering and march of the mob, and the storming of Newgate is surpassed in dramatic intensity by no passage in modern fiction, unless it is by Dickens' own treatment of the French Revolution in the "Tale of Two Cities". Among the important characters, many of whom are the authors of sayings now proverbial, are Gabriel Varden, the cheerful and incorruptible old locksmith, father of the charming flirt Dolly Varden; Mrs. Varden, a type of the narrow-minded zealot; Miss Miggs, their servant, mean, treacherous, and self-seeking; Sim Tappertit, an apprentice, an admirable portrait of the half-fool, half-knave, so often found in the English servile classes about a century ago; Hugh "the hostler" and Dennis the hangman; and Grip, the raven, who fills an important part in the story, and for whom Dickens himself named a favourite raven.

Mature Period

1.Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) is a sermonic book melodramatized by a murder and made unequal by trivial burlesque and intricate plot.

2.Dombey and Son (1846-1848) is memorable for the pictures of Little Paul and the pathos of his death.

The story opens with the death of Mrs. Dombey, who has left her husband, the proud possessor of a baby son and heir. He neglects his daughter Florence and loves Paul, in whom all his ambitions and worldly hopes are centred; but the boy dies. Mr. Dombey marries a beautiful woman, who is as cold and proud as he is, and who has sold herself to him to escape from a designing mother. She grows fond of Florence, and this friendship is so displeasing to Mr.Dombey that he tries to humble her by remonstrating through Mr. Carker, his business manager and friend.

This crafty villain, realizing his power, goads her beyond endurance, and she demands a separation from Mr. Dombey, but is refused. After an angry interview, she determines upon a bold stroke and disgraces her husband by pretending to elope with Carker to France, where she meets him once, shames and defies him and escapes. Mr. Dombey, after spurning Florence, whom he considers the cause of his trouble, follows Carker in hot taste. They encounter each other without warning at a railway station, and as Carker is crossing, the tracks he falls and is instantly killed by an express train. Florence seeks refuge with an old sea captain whom her brother, Paul, has been fond of, marries Walter Gay, the friend of her children, and they go to sea. After the failure of Dombey and Son, when Mr. Dombey's pride is humbled and he is left desolate, Florence returns and takes care of him. The characters in the book are immediately concerned in the plot, but famous for this peculiar qualities, are Captain Cuttle, Florence's kind protector, who has a nautical manner of expression; Sol Gills, Walter's uncle; Mr. Toots, who suffers from shyness and love; and Joe Bagstock, the major. The scene is laid in England at the time the novel was published in 1848.

3.David Copperfield (1849-1853) is a novel, where, excluding the central figure of David, who narrates his adventures, the chief theme is the betrayal of Little Emily by Steerforth and Mr. Peggoty's search for the girl.

"Of all my books" says Dickens in his preface to this immortal novel, "I like this the best . Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite, child. And his name is David Copperfield".

When "David Copperfield" appeared in 1850, after "Dombey and Son" and before "Bleak House", it became so popular that its only rival was "Pickwick". Beneath the fiction lies much of the author's personal life, yet it is not an autobiography. The story treats of David's sad experiences as a child, his youth at school, and his struggles for a livelihood, and leaves him in early manhood, prosperous and happily married. Pathos, humour, and skill in delineation give vitality to this remarkable work; and nowhere has Dickens filled his canvas with more vivid and diversified characters. E.M. Forster says that the author's favourites were the Peggotty family, composed of David's nurse Peggotty, who was married to Barkis, the carrier; Daniel Peggotty, her brother, a Yarmouth fisherman; Ham Peggotty, his nephew; the doleful Mrs. Gummidge; and Little Emily, ruined by David's schoolmate, Steerforth.

"It has been their fate" says Forster "as with all the leading figures of his invention, to pass their names into the language and become types; and he has nowhere given happier embodiment to that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly and all-reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even grandeur the clumsiest forms of humanity."

Miss Betsy Trotwood, David's aunt; the half-mad, but mild Mr. Dick; Mrs. Copperfield, David's mother; Murdstone, his brutal stepfather; Mr. Spenlow and his daughter Dora - David's "child-wife"- Steerforth, Rosa Dartle, Mrs. Steerforth, Mr. Wickfield, his daughter Agnes, (David's second wife),( . ) and the Micawber family, are the persons around whom the interest revolves. A host of minor characters, such as the comical little dwarf hair-dresser, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep and others, are portrayed with the same vivid strokes.

4) Bleak House (1852-1853). One theme of this story is the monstrous injustice and even ruin that could be wrought by the delays in the Old Court of Chancery, which defeated all the purposes of a court of justice. The scene is laid in England about the middle of last century. Lady Dedlock, a beautiful society woman, successfully hides a disgraceful secret. She has been engaged to a Captain Howdon; but through circumstances beyond their control, they were unable to marry, and her infant she believes to have died at birth is alive. Her sister, however, has brought up the child under the name of Esther Summerson. Esther become the ward of Mr. Jarndyce, of the famous chancery law case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, and lives with him at Bleak House. Her unknown father, the Captain dies poor and neglected in London. A veiled lady visits his grave at night; and this confirms a suspicion of Mr. Tulkinghorn, Sir Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, already roused by an act of Lady Dedlock. With the aid of a French maid he succeeds in unravelling the mystery, and determines to inform his friend and client Sir Leicester of his wife's youthful misconduct. On the night before this revelation is to be made, Mr. Tulkinghorn is murdered. Lady Dedlock is suspected of the crime, disappears, and after long search is found by Esther and a detective, lying dead at the gates of the graveyard where her lover is buried. The story is told partly in the third person, and partly as autobiography by Esther. Among the other characters are the irresponsible and impecunious Mr. Skimpole; Mrs. Jellyby, devoted to foreign missions; crazy Miss Flite; Grandfather Smallweed; Krook, the rag-and-bottle dealer; Mr. Guppy, who explains all his actions by the statement that "There are chords in the human mind"; the odiously benevolent Mrs. Pardiggle; Mr. Turveydrop, the model of deportment; Mr. Chadband, whose name has become proverbial for a certain kind of loose jointed pulpit exhortation, Caddy Jellyby, with inky fingers and spoiled temper-all of whom Dickens portrays in his most humorous manner; and, among the most touching of his children of the slums, the pathetic figure of poor Jo, the crossing-sweeper, who "don't know nothink". The story is long and complicated; but its clever satire, its delightful humour, and its ingrained pathos, makes it one of Dickens's most popular novels.

5) Hard Times (1854) is a revolutionary problem novel presenting the squalor and misery of a textile town, denouncing trade-union agitators.

When "Hard Times" appeared as a serial in Household Words in 1854, Dickens was about midway in his literary career. In the same year this novel appeared in an octavo volume with a dedication to Thomas Carlyle. Its purpose, according to Dickens himself, was to satirize "those who see figures and averages and nothing else-the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time - the men who through long years to come will do more to damage the really useful facts of Political Economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole life". The satire, however, like much that Dickens attempted in the same vein, was not very bitter.

The characters in "Hard Times" are not numerous; and the plot itself is less intricate than others by Dickens. The chief figures are Mr. Thomas Gradgrind "a man of realities", with his unbounded faith in statistics; Louisa, his eldest daughter, and Josiah Bounderby, as practical as Mr. Gradgrind, but less kind-hearted; Louisa, though many years younger than Mr. Bounderby, is persuaded by her father to marry him. She is also influenced in making this marriage by her desire to smooth the path of her brother Tom, a clerk in Mr. Bounderby's office. Though not happy, she resists the blandishments of James Harthouse, a professed friend of her husband's. To escape him, she has to go home to her father and this leads to a permanent enstrangement between husband and wife. In the meantime Tom Gradgrind has stolen money from Bounderby, and to avoid punishment runs away from England. Then Louisa's sacrifice of herself has been useless. Mr.Gradgrind's wife and his other children play an unimportant part in the story. Of more consequence is Sissy (Cecilia) Jupe, whom the elder Gradgrind has befriended in spite of her being the daughter of a circus clown; and Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper, who has seen better days, and is overpowering with her relationship to Lady Scadgers. Mrs. Pegler, the mother of Josiah Bounderby, is a curious and amusing figure; while a touch of pathos is given by the love of Hephen Blackpool the weaver, for Rachel, whom he cannot marry because his erring wife still lives.

Mr. Gradgrind came to see the fallacy of mere statistics; but Josiah Bounderely, the self - made man, who loved to belittle his own origin, never admitted that he could be wrong. When he died, Louisa was still young enough to repair her early mistake by a second and happier marriage.

6. Little Dorrit (1855 - 1857) was published when the author's popularity was at its height. The plot is a slight one on which to hang more than fifty characters. The author began with the intention of emphasizing the fact that individuals brought together by chance, if only for an instant, continue henceforth to influence and to act and react upon one another. But this original motive is soon altogether forgotten in the multiplication of characters and the relation of their fortunes. The central idea is to portray the experiences of Dorrit family, immured for many years on account of debt in the old Marshalsea Prison, and then unexpectedly restored to wealth and freedom. Having been pitiable in poverty, they become arrogant and contemptible in affluence. Amy, "Little Dorrit", alone remains pure, lovable, and self-denying. In her, Dickens embodies the best human qualities in a most beautiful and persuasive form. She enlists the love of Arthur Clenman, who meantime has had his own trials. Returning from India, after long absence, he finds his mother a religious fanatic domineered over by most the hypocritical old Flintwinch, and both preyed upon by the Mephistophelian Blandois, perhaps the dastardly villain in the whole Dickens gallery. The complications, however, end happily for Arthur and Amy. The main attack of the book is aimed against official "red tape" as exemplified in the Barnacle family and the "Circumlocution Office". It also shows up Merdle the swindling banker, "Bar", "Bishop" and other types of "Society". The Meagleses are "practical" people with soft hearts; their daughter is married to and bullied by Henry Gowan, whose mother is a genteel pauper at Hampton Court. Other characters are Pancks the collector, "puffing like a steam - engine", his hypocritical employer Casby, the humble and worthy Plornishes, the love - blighted and epitaphic young John Chivery, and the wonderful Mr. Fllintwinch's aunt with her explosive utterances. The novel is intricate in plot but splendid in its indictment of the system of imprisonment for debt and of the dilatoriness of the Circumlocution Office (government departments).

7. A Tale of Two Cities (1860 - 1861) is one of his most artistic novels, restrained both in its melodrama and romantic atmosphere. It differs essentially from all his other novels in style and manner of treatment. Forster, in his "Life of Dickens", writes that "there is no instance, in his novels excepting this, of a deliberate and planned departure from the method of treatment which had been pre - eminently the source of his popularity as a novelist." To rely less upon character than upon incident, and to resolve that his actors should be expressed by the story more than they should express themselves by dialogue, was for him hazardous, and can hardly be called an entirely successful experiment. With singular dramatic vivacity, much constructive art and with descriptive passages of high order everywhere, there was probably never a book by a great humanist, and an artist so prolific in conception with so little humour and so few remarkable figures. Its merit lies elsewhere". The two cities are London and Paris. The time is just before and during the French Revolution. A peculiar chain of events knits and interweaves the lives of a "few simple, private people" with the outbreak of a terrible public event. Dr. Manette has been a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years, languishing there, as did so many others, on some vague unfounded charge. His release when the story opens, his restoration to his daughter Lucie, the trial and acquittal of one Charles Durnay, nephew of a French marquis, on a charge of treason, the marriage of Lucie Manette to Darnay - these incidents form the introduction to the drama of blood which is to follow. Two friends of the Manette family complete the circle of important characters: Mr. Lorry, a solicitor of a very ancient London firm, and Sydney Carton, the most complete gentleman to be found in Dickens. Carton has wasted his talents leading a wild, bohemian life in London. The one garden spot in his life is his love for Lucie Manette. To this love he clings as a drawning man to a spar. For this love he lays down his life. At the breaking out of the French Revolution, Darnay hastens to Paris to aid an old family servant, who is in danger of losing his life. His wife and his father-in-law follow him. Gradually the entire circle of friends, including Mr. Lorry and Sydney Carton, find themselves in the horrible environment of the Paris of the Terror. Darney himself is imprisoned and condemned to death by the agency of a wine - seller, Defarge, and his wife, a female impersonation of blood and war. To save the husband of the woman he loves, Carton by strategy takes his place in prison. The novel closes with the magnificent scene when Carton goes to his death on the scaffold, redeeming a worthless life by one supreme act of devotion. Only the little sewing girl in the death - cart with him knows his secret. As he mounts the guillotine there rises before him the vision of a redeemed and renewed Paris, of a great and glorious nation. There rises before him many memories and many dead hopes of his own past life, but in his heart there is the serenity of triumph: "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known".

Final Period

1. Great Expectations (1860 - 1861) is one of his most artistic novels, restrained both in its melodrama and romantic atmosphere. It is Dickens's tenth novel, published nine years before his death. As in "David Copperfield", the hero tells his own story from boyhood. Yet, in several essential points "Great Expectations" is markedly different from "David Copperfield", and from Dickens's other novels. Owing to the simplicity of the plot, and to the small number of characters, it possesses greater unity of design. These characters, each drawn with marvelous distinctness of outline, are subordinated throughout to the central personage "Pip", whose great expectations form the pivot of the narrative.

But, the element that most clearly distinguishes this novel from the others is the subtle study of the development of character through the influence of environment and circumstance. In the career of Pip, a more careful and natural presentation of personality is made than is usual with Dickens.

He is a village boy who longs to be a "gentleman". His dreams of wealth and opportunity suddenly come true. He is supplied with money and sent to London to be educated and to prepare for his new station in life. Later he discovers that his unknown benefactor is a convict to whom he had once rendered a service. The convict, returning against the law to England, is recaptured and dies in prison his fortune being forfeited to the Crown. Pip's great expectations vanish into thin air.

The changes in Pip's character under these varying fortunes are most skillfully depicted. He presents himself first, as a small boy in the house of his dearly loved brother-in-law Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith, having no greater ambition' than to be Joe's apprentice. After a visit to the house of a Miss Havisham, the nature of his aspirations is completely changed. Miss Havisham is one of the strangest of Dickens's creations. Jilted by her lover on the wedding night, she resolves to wear her bridal gown as long as she lives, and to keep her house as it was when the blow fell upon her. The candles are always burning; the moldering banquet is always spread. In the midst of this desolation, she is bringing up, a beautiful little girl, Estella, as an instrument of revenge, teaching the child to use beauty and her grace to Fortune men. Estella's first victim is Pip. She laughs at his rustic appearance, makes him dissatisfied with Joe and the life at the forge. When he finds himself heir to a fortune, it is the thought of Estella's scorn that keeps him from returning Joe's honest and faithful love. As a "gentleman" he plays tricks with his conscience, seeking always to excuse his false pride and flimsy ideals of position. The convict's return and the consequent revelation of the identity of his benefactor, humbles Pip. He realizes at last the dignity of labour, and the worth of noble character. He gains a new and manly serenity after years of hard work. Estella's pride has also been humbled and her character purified by her experiences. The book closes upon their mutual love.

"Great Expectations" is a delightful novel, rich in humour and free from false pathos. The character of Joe Gargery, simple, tender, quaintly humorous would alone give imperishable value to the book. Scarcely less well - drawn are Pip's termagant sister, "Mrs. Joe"; the sweet and wholesome village girl, Biddy, who becomes Joe's second wife, Uncle Pumblechook, obsequious or insolent as the person he addresses is rich or poor; Pip's friend and chum in London, the dear boy Herbert Pocket; the convict with his wistful love of Pip; bright, imperious Estella, these are of the immortals in fiction.

2. Our Mutual Friend (1864 - 1865), besides the frequent criticism concerning the dubious grammar of the title, is overcomplicated in plot. The scene is laid in London and its immediate neighborhood. All the elaborate machinery dear to Dickens's heart is here introduced. There is the central story of Our Mutual Friend, himself the younger heir to the vast Hermon estate, who buries his identity and assumes the name of John Rokesmith, that he may form his own judgment of the young woman whom he must marry in order to claim his fortune. There is the other story of the poor bargeman's daughter, and her love for reckless Eugene Wrayburn, the idol of society; and uniting these two threads in the history of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, the ignorant, kind - hearted couple, whose innocent ambitions and benevolent use of money intrusted in their care, afford the author's opportunity for the humour and pathos of which he was a master.

Among the characters which this story has made famous are Miss Jenny Wren, the doll's dressmaker, a little, crippled creature whose love for Lizzie Hexam transforms her miserable life; Bradley Headstone, the schoolmaster, suffering torments because of his jealousy of Eugene Wrayburn, and helpless under the careless contempt of that trained adversary - dying at last in an agony of defeat at his failure to kill Eugene; and the triumph of Lizzie's love over the social difference between her and her lover; Bella Wilfer, "the boofer lady " cured of her longing for riches and made John Harmon's happy wife by the plots and plans of the Golden Dustman, Mr. Boffin; and Silas Wegg, an impudent scoundrel employed by Mr. Boffin, who is, at first, delighted with the services of "a literary man with a wooden leg", but who gradually reorganizes the cheat and impostor, and unmasks him in dramatic fashion. As usual, Dickens finds to incite his readers to practical benevolence. In this book he has a protest against the poor - laws in the person of old Betty Higden, whose dread of the almshouse haunts her dying hours. By many, this volume, published among his later works, is counted as among the most important.

3. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) is a fragment of detective fiction that has set up a challenge for completion. Only six of the projected 12 monthly numbers were written.  Dickens had set out to write a mystery story, set chiefly in the cathedral city of Cloisterham. John Jasper leads a double life as cathedral choirmaster and opium addict, travelling secretly to a London opium den to satisfy his craving. Edwin Drood, on whose mysterious disappearance the story was to have centred, is Jasper's nephew; he was betrothed as a child to Rosa Bud, but the couple are not in love and their engagement is dissolved. Jasper nurses a passion for Rosa. Edwin vanishes on Christmas Eve after a ferocious thunderstorm.