Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens of the Victorian era is one of English language’s greatest writers and was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters. He achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime and till date his characters continue to endear. So much so that his novels and short stories have never gone out of print!

Charles Dickens’s florid and poetic writing style had a strong comic touch. He used his rich imagination, sense of humour and detailed memories, particularly of his childhood, to enliven his fiction. Dickens’s novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Charles Dickens’s second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime and was responsible for the clearing of the actual London slum. One ‘character’ vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are described over the course of his corpus.

Among his best-known works are Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, and A Christmas Carol. Some of his famous characters are Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, Mrs Gamp, Oliver Twist, Samuel Pickwick, Miss Havisham and Wackford Squeers. Charles Dickens’ novels were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.