Charles Dickens Research Paper

Charles Dickens and the Industrial Revolution Dickens is the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, during the time of the industrial revolution. He has written 15 novels and was most appreciated for his “dark” novels (Major Authors and illustrators for children and young adults, 2002). Most of Dickens remaining manuscripts of his novels are in the Foster collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, December 23,1991). He died of a paralytic stroke, at Glades Hill, Kent, England, June 18, 1870. Buried in poet's corner of Westminster Abbey (Major Authors and illustrators for children and young adults, 2002). He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth

“He was influenced by the reading of his youth, and by the stories his nursemaid created such as the continued saga of Captain Murder” (The classic literature library). He was told and read dark stories as a child. “When Dickens was twelve years old, his family fell on hard times and he was put to work in a blacking warehouse, pasting labels on bottles of shoe-blacking. Here, he mingled with boys and men of the working class, experiencing and observing the devastating results of poverty” (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, December 23,1991). His childhood was hard and could have been why his novels are rather dark. “Dickens's boyhood was passed in towns on the south coast of England, especially in the twin towns of Rochester and Chatham, where the family settled when he was five. This pocket of pre industrial England had a powerful impact on Dickens's attitudes” (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, December 23,1991). Even where he grew up impacted Dickens. Dickens was always to take notice of poverty and included it alot in his writings. “However, he was also greatly concerned about poverty and sanitation. In New York, escorted by two policemen (the other part of the "we" in the excerpt given here), he visited the Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan, America's most notorious slum. Here Irish immigrants and black Americans were crowded together in conditions of extreme filth and poverty” (Social

“His experiences in school later gave him the basis for many of the chapters of David Copperfield” (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, December 23,1991). “I might have a misgiving that I am 'meandering' in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics”(Dickens David Copperfield pg.8). David Copperfield is about a grown man who explains his childhood. David's mother marries Mr.Murdstone who treats David cruelly. The Murdstones send David away to school. “Dickens was taught at home by his mother, attended a Dame school at Chatom for a short time, and Wellington Academy in London, then self taught by reading in the British Museum” (Major Authors and illustrators for children and young adults, 2002). Dickens used his experiences in his ideas and