Dickens, Charles John Huffham

Dickens, Charles John Huffham (1812–70), the son of a clerk in the Navy pay office. His father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea and he himself (aged 12) worked in a blacking warehouse. Memories of this painful period inspired much of his fiction, notably the early chapters of David Copperfield. He became reporter of debates in the Commons for the Morning Chronicle and contributed to periodicals the articles subsequently republished as Sketches by ‘Boz’, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People (1836–7); these led to an approach from Chapman and Hall which resulted in the creation of Mr Pickwick, and the publication in 20 monthly numbers of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836–7). (See Pickwick Papers.) The series achieved immense popularity, and Dickens, with his young wife Catherine Hogarth, embarked on a promising future. On Christmas Day 1836 he met John Forster, who became his close friend and biographer.

Oliver Twist (1837–8) appeared in monthly numbers in Bentley's Miscellany, a new periodical of which Dickens was the first editor. His next novel was Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9), also in monthly numbers. In 1840 Dickens launched a new weekly, Master Humphrey's Clock, in which appeared The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1) and his long-deliberated Barnaby Rudge (1841), but the novels proved so popular that the linking by ‘Master Humphrey’ was dropped. In 1842 he and his wife visited America, where he was rapturously received. His first impressions were favourable, but disillusion followed and his American Notes (1842) caused much offence in America, as did his portrayal of American stereotypes in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–4). While in America he advocated international copyright and the abolition of slavery.

A Christmas Carol (1843) was the first of a series of Christmas books (The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man). In 1844 he paid a long visit to Italy, which produced ‘Pictures from Italy’ contributed to the Daily News, a new radical paper founded by Dickens in 1846. He began Dombey and Son (1848) during a visit to Switzerland in 1846. In 1850 he started the weekly periodical Household Words; in 1859 it was incorporated into All the Year Round, which he continued to edit until his death. In this he published much of his later writings. David Copperfield appeared in monthly numbers in 1849–50; Bleak House in 1852–3; and A Child's History of England appeared irregularly, 1851–3. Hard Times appeared in 1854; Little Dorrit in 1855–7, A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, Great Expectations in 1860–1, and Our Mutual Friend in 1864–5.

During these years of intense productivity he also found time for his large family, for a vast circle of friends, and for philanthropic enterprises, at times combined with his passion for amateur theatricals. His admiration for the young actress Ellen Ternan further strained his deteriorating marriage and he and Catherine separated in 1858. He defied scandal, protesting his own innocence and distracting himself from domestic sorrow by throwing his restless energy into public readings of his own works. He revisited America in 1867–8, delivered a series of readings there, and on his return continued to tour the provinces. He died leaving unfinished his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens captured the popular imagination as no other novelist had done and, despite some murmurs against his sensationalism and sentimentality and his inability to portray women other than as innocents or grotesques, he was also held in high critical esteem. But it was not until this century that he began to attract serious academic attention. Later criticism has tended to praise the complexity of the sombre late works at the expense of the high-spirited humour and genius for caricature traditionally labelled ‘Dickensian’. Several distinguished illustrators are inseparably connected with his work, including H. K. Browne (‘Phiz’), Leech, and Cruikshank. Dickens collaborated with Wilkie Collins in various stories which appeared in Household Words.