Xavier Lachazette, Université du Maine (Le Mans, France)
« An Introduction to
>> PowerPoint presentation designed to accompany
six 1-hour conferences for L2 students (sophomores)
in the Fall of 2013 and 2014.
>> The works studied in the seminars were Pictures from Italy
and A Tale of Two Cities.
Xavier Lachazette, Université du Maine (Le Mans, France)
An Introduction to
A) General Information
On Charles Dickens
A1) A few pictures
A2) His production
A3) His relevance today
A1) A few pictures
A1) A few pictures (ctd.)
A1) A few pictures (end)
A2) The greatest Victorian writer’s production
[Sketches by Boz
(56 sketches published
for the most part in 1833-36)]
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The Pickwick Papers (1836-7)
Oliver Twist (1837-9)
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4)
Dombey and Son (1846-8)
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David Copperfield (1849-50)
Bleak House (1852-3)
Hard Times (1854)
Little Dorrit (1855-7)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1860-1)
Our Mutual Friend (1864-5)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(1870)
A2) Dickens’s production (ctd.)
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A Christmas Carol (1843) (“Ebenezer Scrooge”)
The Chimes (1844)
The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
The Battle of Life (1846)
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
(1848)
A2) Dickens’s production (end)
» Play: The Frozen Deep (1856)
written by Wilkie Collins (collaboration)
‘Richard Wardour’ (Dickens) / ‘Frank Aldersley’ (Collins)
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Journals edited by Dickens:
Bentley’s Miscellany: 1836-39 (contributor)
Master Humphrey’s Clock: 1840-41 (entirely)
The Daily News: 1846 (edited 17 issues only)
Household Words: 1850-59 (his own paper, contributor)
All the Year Round: 1858-70 (his own paper, contributor;
A Tale of Two Cities; edited by his son Charley until
1888; ceased altogether in 1893)
A3) Dickens’s relevance today
£10 note issued in 1992-93. Ceased to be legal tender in 2003.
A3) Dickens’s relevance today (ctd.)
» Yearly Dickens festivals in the US & in England
• Myrtle Beach, SC (Xmas Show & Festivals)
• Port Jefferson, NY (Dickens Festival)
• Rochester (Kent, SE of England)  festivities like
readings + a parade of Dickensian characters
A3) Dickens’s relevance today (ctd.)
Discover Britain, March 2013
A3) Dickens’s relevance today (end)
Discover Britain, March 2013
B) Dickens’s Life and Works
B1) Difficult beginnings
B2) First successes
B3) Formative trips abroad
B4) Years of success and prosperity
B5) Years of personal crisis
Biographical information
B1) Difficult beginnings
• John & Elizabeth Dickens > the Marshalsea
“Mr. Micawber” (in David Copperfield)
“Mrs. Nickleby” (in Nicholas Nickleby)
• Warren’s Blacking Factory / John Forster
• Studied shorthand  free-lance law reporter 
Parliamentary reporter (Mirror of Parliament) 
reporter for 2 papers (True Sun/Morning Chronicle)
• Maria Beadnell = love at first sight!
B1) Difficult beginnings (ctd.)
» “I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I
have not the least idea what we had for dinner,
besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off
Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates
untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had
the most delightful little voice, the gayest little
laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little
ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless
slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So
much the more precious, I thought.”
“Chapter 26: I fall into captivity”, David Copperfield,
1849-50
B1) Difficult beginnings (end)
» “Clennam's eyes no sooner fell upon the subject of his
old passion than it shivered and broke to pieces. […]
Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and
short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he
had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not
much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said
and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much.
Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago, was
determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was a
fatal blow.
This is Flora!”
“Chapter 13: Patriarchal”, Little Dorrit, 1855-57
Biographical information
B2) First successes
• 1/12/1833: “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” (later, “Mr. Minns
and His Cousin”)
• Sketches by Boz (1833-36)
Penname “Boz” < from “Moses” (brother Augustus)
• Pickwick Papers: Robert Seymour (suicide) / H.K.
Browne (“Phiz”) = illustrator
• Catherine Hogarth
• Editor of Bentley’s Miscellany (1836-39)
Meets John Forster (his future biographer)
• Editor of Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840-41)
Biographical information
B3) Formative trips abroad
• Canada & the US (1842)
• Copyright issues (in England, MP for Reading)
“Ignorant of the complications of copyright politics and of the recent
severe depression, he crossed the Atlantic with the naïve expectation
that in this republic of his imagination elemental notions of fairness
would triumph over politics and power relationships, as if America were
some elegant utopia.”
(Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography, Johns Hopkins UP, p. 124-25)
• Abolition of slavery (aka “the peculiar institution”)
>> A1: “Slavery is not a whit the more endurable because some hearts
are to be found which can partially resist its hardening influences; nor
can the indignant tide of honest wrath stand still, because in its onward
course it overwhelms a few who are comparatively innocent, among a
host of guilty.” (American Notes, “Chapter 16: Slavery”)
B3) Formative trips abroad (ctd.)
• Abolition of slavery (ctd.)
>> A2: “Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his health
and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear himself, indulge
hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder? No. All these are roads to
ruin. And why, then, do men tread them? Because such inclinations are
among the vicious qualities of mankind.” (American Notes, “Chapter 16:
Slavery”)
>> A3: “Public opinion” = in favour of slavery  no help for slaves.
>> A4: “But it may be worth while to inquire how the slave-owners, and
the class of society to which great numbers of them belong, defer to
public opinion in their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other;
how they are accustomed to restrain their passions; what their bearing is
among themselves; whether they are fierce or gentle; whether their
social customs be brutal, sanguinary, and violent, or bear the impress of
civilisation and refinement.” (American Notes, “Chapter 16: Slavery”)
 Book entitled American Notes (1842, a travelogue) + novel Martin
Chuzzlewit (1843-44)
B3) Formative trips abroad (ctd.)
• Penitentiaries (Pennsylvania, “solitary confinement”)
 A Tale of Two Cities
a. “I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the
immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful
punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in
guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen
written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they
feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of
terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves
can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his
fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the
mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any
torture of the body […]”
B3) Formative trips abroad (ctd.)
b. “Standing at the central point, and looking down these
dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is
awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some
lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled
by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only
serves to make the general stillness more profound. […] He
is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of
years; and in the mean time dead to everything but
torturing anxieties and horrible despair.
His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown,
even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is
a number over his cell-door, and in a book of which the
governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral
instructor another: this is the index of his history.”
B3) Formative trips abroad (ctd.)
» c. ‘And are [you] a better man, you think?’ ‘Well, I hope so: I’m
sure I hope I may be.’ ‘And time goes pretty quickly?’ ‘Time is very
long, gentlemen, within these four walls!’
He gazed about him—Heaven only knows how wearily!—as he
said these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange
stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he
sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went about his work
again.
» d. “My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish
it occasions—an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all
imagination of it must fall far short of the reality—it wears the
mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough
contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that
those who have undergone this punishment, must pass into
society again morally unhealthy and diseased.”
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
• Italy, Switzerland, & France (1844-47)
• Christmas Carols: financial gain AND sincerity (Pr.
Felton)
• 3 main reasons: exhaustion; unpopularity; finances.
 Genoa, Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice…
• Pictures from Italy (1846)
• What Dickens especially focuses on:
1. contrasts
2. vitality of the Italians
3. his personal reactions
• The originality of Pictures according to Sylvère
Monod
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
Originality of Pictures from Italy (1/4)
…/…
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
Originality of Pictures from Italy (2/4)
Sylvère Monod, “Préface” to Images d’Italie,
Avignon: A. Barthelemy, 2001, p. 9-11.
…/…
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
Originality of Pictures from Italy (3/4)
[…]
Sylvère Monod, “Préface” to Images d’Italie,
Avignon: A. Barthelemy, 2001, p. 9-11.
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
Originality of Pictures from Italy (4/4)
Sylvère Monod, “Préface” to Images d’Italie, Avignon: A. Barthelemy, 2001,
p. 9-11.
[…]
B3) Formative trips abroad (end)
• Italy, Switzerland, & France (continued)
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Effect of Europe on Dickens :
1. a different perspective  formulates his set of core
beliefs ;
2. focus on poverty;
3. fight against social injustice.
About The Chimes: “I like more and more my notion of
making, in this little book, a great blow for the poor.
Something powerful, I think I can do, but I want to be
tender too, and cheerful; as like the Carol in that respect as
may be, and as unlike it as such a thing can be […] and if my
design be anything at all, it has a grip upon the very throat
of the time.” (letter to John Forster, 8 Oct. 1844)
• Dombey and Son (1847-48): Switzerland, Paris & London!
Biographical information
B4) Years of success and prosperity
a) Dickens & the performing arts
• His amateur theatrical company (1845)  Ben Jonson’s 1598 play
Every Man in His Humour.
• Accomplished magician  Tavistock House entertainments (his
London home, 1851-60)
his last home: Gad’s Hill in Kent (bought 1856, moved in 1857)]
• Public readings  Birmingham (1853). Powerful episode: murder of
Nancy by Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist.
“As well as being our greatest novelist, Dickens developed a new,
composite art form in his stage performances, acting out specially
adapted passages from his own works and varying his
expressions and speech patterns, so that it seemed as if he were
becoming possessed by the characters he created. His reading
tours won him huge popular acclaim on both sides of the
Atlantic.”
Matt Shinn in The Guardian (Saturday 31 January 2004) .
Tavistock House, London
(demolished 1901)
1851-60
B4) Years of success and prosperity (ctd.)
Gad’s Hill, Kent
(not yet open to the public – see article)
1856-70
b) Dickens & charities
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B4) Years of success and prosperity (ctd.)
1844: “Ragged Schools Union”  Dickens visits Field Lane Ragged School.
From 1846-7: “Urania Cottage” in West London (Shepherd’s Bush). Home for “fallen
women.” Advised Angela Burdett-Coutts.
“[S]he is degraded and fallen, but not lost, having the shelter; and that the
means of Return to Happiness.” (Dickens letter of 23 May 1846 to Burdett-Coutts)
1851: Guild of Literature and Arts. With the help of his friend novelist Edward BulwerLytton.
Angela Burdett-Coutts
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
B4) Years of success and prosperity (ctd.)
B4) Years of success and prosperity (ctd.)
c) Dickens’s greatest novels & journalism
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Dombey and Son (1846-8)
David Copperfield (1849-50)  Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
A new weekly: Household Words (from 30 March 1850)
 Master Humphrey’s Clock ( †1841), Daily News (1846)
 Platform for social reform. Influence of Thomas Carlyle (Chartism, 1840
or Past and Present 1843)  issues like slum clearance, prison
administration, educational systems, sanitary measures, etc.
 A modern magazine
“It was to be a weekly miscellany of general literature; and its stated
objects were to be, to contribute to the entertainment and instruction of
all classes of readers, and to help in the discussion of the more important
social questions of the time. It was to comprise short stories by others as
well as himself; matters of passing interest in the liveliest form that could
be given to them; subjects suggested by books that might most be
attracting attention; and poetry in every number if possible, but in any case
something of romantic fancy. This was to be a cardinal point. There was to
be no mere utilitarian spirit; with all familiar things, but especially those
repellent on the surface, something was to be connected that should be
fanciful or kindly; and the hardest workers were to be taught that their lot
is not necessarily excluded from the sympathies and graces of
imagination.”
John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, “Book Six: At the Summit (1847-52)”
B4) Years of success and prosperity (end)
c) Dickens’s greatest novels & journalism (end)
Lord Northcliffe called Dickens “the greatest magazine
editor either of this or of any other age” (Northcliffe founded
Daily Mail, then owned The Times)
Importance of Household Words:
 Dickens’s evolution
 Embryonic form of his later novels
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Bleak House: from March 1852  slowness of the judicial system
Hard Times: published in Household Words from April 1854  education
Little Dorrit: from December 1855  debtor’s prison, inefficient governments
Biographical information
B5) Years of personal crisis
• Problematic relationships
• 1858: separation from his wife Catherine
 Ellen Lawless Ternan in The Frozen Deep  mistress
 “Estella” in Great Expectations, “Bella Wilfer” in Our
Mutual Friend, “Helena Landless” in The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• William Makepeace Thackeray, his friend & literary rival
* The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) or Vanity Fair (1847-48)
* Daughters Annie & Minnie (Thackeray) friends with Mamie &
Katey (Dickens)
* “A fatal story for our trade” (of Dickens’s separation,
behaviour to his wife & “Personal Statement” in The Times)
• Bradbury & Evans  Chapman & Hall (publishers)
All the Year Round (1859)  A Tale of Two Cities (from April)
B5) Years of personal crisis (ctd.)
• Problematic relationships (ctd.)
Dickens’s “Personal Statement,” The Times, 7 June 1858.
B5) Years of personal crisis (end)
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9 June 1865: Staplehurst Railway
accident (see article)
“Suddenly I came upon a staggering man covered
with blood (I think he must have been flung clean
out of his carriage) with such a frightful cut across
the skull that I couldn't bear to look at him. I
poured some water over his face, and gave him
some to drink, and gave him some brandy, and laid
him down on the grass, and he said, “I am gone”,
and died afterwards.
Then I stumbled over a lady lying on her back
against a little pollard tree, with the blood
streaming over her face (which was lead colour) in
a number of distinct little streams from the head.
I asked her if she could swallow a little brandy, and
she just nodded, and I gave her some and left her
for somebody else. The next time I passed her, she
was dead.“
Letter to his friend Thomas Mitton, 13 June 1865
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9 June 1870: Died of exhaustion &
another stroke
C) Further Reading
C1) Recommended biographies
C2) Recommended book of facsimiles
C1) Further reading: Recommended biographies
 A recent (&
 The ‘official’
excellent)
biography
(2012).
biography
(1872-74).
Available
online. Also
exists illustrated & abridged.
The most 
famous of the
Dickens
biographies.
Abridged in
2002.
A short 
and very good
introduction in
French (2011).
C2) Further reading: Recommended book of facsimiles
Wonderful facsimiles of
documents related to Dickens
Published on the occasion of
the bicentenary of Dickens’s
birth (2012) by the Charles
Dickens Museum and one of
Dickens’s descendants,
Lucinda Dickens Hawksley.
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