Charles Dickens and the Victorian novel Scuola secondaria I grado Lorenzo Ghiberti Istituto Comprensivo di Pelago Classi III A/III C A.S. 2013/2014 Prof.ssa F. Gambella

Charles Dickens Charles Dickens is one of the greatest novelists in the English language. He wrote about the real world of Victorian England and many of his characters were not rich, middleclass ladies and gentlemen, but poor and hungry people.

Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on 7th February 1812. He was the son of an office clerk. As a child he liked reading and was encouraged a lot

Charles Dickens When Dickens was only 12 years old, his father went to prison because of financial problems. Young Dickens left school and went to work in a factory. He worked long hours in very unpleasant conditions and never forgot this terrible experience.

Charles Dickens

In 1831 he became a newspaper reporter. Soon he started writing short stories for magazines

Charles Dickens In Dickens's times, novels were often published in parts in magazines: every week or month a part of the story appeared in the magazine

Charles Dickens

This continued for many months until the story was finished. A lot of people bought the magazines to read the story

Charles Dickens In 1836 Dickens's first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was published in monthly parts. Dickens finished The Pickwick Papers in 1837, when Victoria became queen. His first novel was a big success

Charles Dickens

Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in April 1836. They had ten children.

Charles Dickens

In his life Dickens met many people: young and old, rich and poor, happy and miserable. He wrote about some of them in his novels.

Charles Dickens

Dickens's books are about poverty and social problems in the Victorian age, They were very popular in the nineteenth century and are still popular today

Charles Dickens Dickens wrote fourteen major novels. Some of them are Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A tale of Two Cities, Hard Times and Great Expectations. He also wrote comic plays.

Charles Dickens Dickens was a very dynamic man. He travelled and lived in North America, Switzerland, Italy and France. He went to the United States to read his books in public. This was an enormous success

Charles Dickens He died in 1870 and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey in London

Charles Dickens During the Victorian Age the most pupular literary form was the novel, which satisfied the taste of the reading public, mostly represented by the middle class

Charles Dickens

It was essentially a realistic novel, as it analysed the problems of people and criticized their hypocrisies;

Charles Dickens

it was didactic, as it was intended to instruct and reform;

Charles Dickens

it was often serialized, as it was generally published in serials on magazines.

Charles Dickens

After the Pickwick Papers Dickens wrote a series of novels such as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, perhaps his masterpiece

Charles Dickens In these novels Dickens showed a great interest in the social problems of the age, such as the poverty of the working classes, the squalor of the slums, bad schools, bad institutions.

Charles Dickens These novels are called sentimental because the tone is not bitter or tragic but sentimental and melodramatic: at the end of these novels the wicked are punished while the good are rewarded.

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist, like other early works, is a sort of fairy tale in which good triumphs over evil.

Charles Dickens The plot Oliver Twist's mother was very poor and ill and she died in a workhouse. Oliver lived in an orphanage until he was nine and then went to a workhouse.

Charles Dickens When he asked for more porridge, Mr Bumble put him in a dark room and beat him. Then he went to work for Mr Sowerberry. Here Oliver had a fight with Noah Claypole. He was very unhappy at Mr Sommerberry's and he left.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens In London he met Fagin and his young thieves.

Charles Dickens But he also met good people like Mr Brownlow and Mrs Bedwin. One night Oliver went into a big house and got shot. Rose Maylie and her aunt helped him get better. After a lot of adventures with bad people he found happiness in the home of Mr Brownlow.

Charles Dickens When the novel was published many people started to think about the conditions in the workhouses and tried to make things better.

Charles Dickens Many of Dickens’s novels looked closely at the lives of poor people and Dickens was very good at making his characters seem like real people.