Back to: Dickens A Christmas Carol and the Bible
1 Instability A notable feature of Dickens’s earliest years were their instability. Frequent reversals in economic circumstances forced the family to move from place to place, each move bringing disruption and change—at times to pleasant and nurturing surroundings but also to situations that made for anxiety and limitation.
Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in the Portsmouth area of England, where his father, John Dickens, was employed as a clerk in the navy pay office. It was a center of much commercial and political activity because of England’s wars against Napoleon and the United States. Dickens, known as Charley to his family, was one of six children.
The most difficult period of family life stemmed from the father’s ill handling of his earnings, leading finally, in 1824, to serious debt
With a debt of 40 pounds, John Dickens was taken to a form of detention center and given a limited period of time to appeal to friends and family for the necessary funds. When the rescue failed to materialize, Charles had to witness his father being taken to Marshalsea, a debtor’s prison, and, as a consequence, the rest of his family descend into poverty and shame. To help support the family, he was required to leave school and work as a laborer. Dickens’s experience at Warren’s Blacking Factory has generated a range of commentary. T
There is no disputing that, because of his father’s debt, twelve-year-old Dickens worked ten-hour days sunder dark, unpleasant, and sometimes cold conditions filling small pots with shoe blacking and pasting a printed label on each, earning six shillings per week. It is easy to imagine—and Dickens much later revealed these feelings— that both physically and emotionally the experience was a nightmare. About the age of 47, just before publishing David Copperfield (1849–50), he wrote about the factory with “its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place” (quoted in The Man Who Invented Christmas, 3).+
2 Turnaround – Like Christmas Carol
When his father was released from prison after receiving a small inheritance, Dickens was able to leave the factory job and attend a boarding school, where he spent two happy and productive years. The
Self – taught – Dickens made use of for his self-structured education, including frequent visits to museums and the theater and voracious reading. Dickens acquired a substantial library of English and American literature and on his two trips to the United States became acquainted with history and biography. Natural history also interested him—Darwin’s work was in his library—as did psychic phenomena such as “twilight” states of consciousness, although he was adamantly skeptical about séances and other displays of communicating with the dead. Dickens
Explored his talents and creative – Dickens is given credit for publishing’s rise in popularity because of his prolific offerings and for their accessibility to the public. He began his long career in 1833 when he published his first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” and became a reporter for The Morning Chronicle. The next decade was especially productive. He married Catherine Hogarth in 1834 and six of his ten children were born to her. Dickens drew popular attention to himself immediately after he began writing his stories and sketches about London street life. First published anonymously and then by the penname Boz, his stories were solicited by several London publications. In 1836, two sets of stories—both called Sketches by Boz—were published under his name, and he was at work on Pickwick Papers.
In 1837, Dickens began his long and lucrative tradition of serializing his publications, beginning with Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. He and his various editors worked out a system of publishing a novel in sections, each selling for a shilling, each with the additional appeal of having solicited illustrations to accompany the text. After the series was complete, the publisher would bring out the whole work in a single volume selling for up to 21 shillings. Although no records of literacy rates existed in England at that time, an estimation of somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 readers (in a total population of two million people) has been estimated (see Standiford,29). Using records of Dickens’s sales, it appears that he was being read by one-fifth to one-quarter of England’s population
3 Religion –
Critic Valentine Cunningham writes: “[He was a] very English, Protestant, and Anglican-inflected [Christian writer]” (“Dickens and Christianity,” Companion, 255). Baptized in the Church of England, he attended sermons in different churches every Sunday and went to chapel services in the evening. His religious ideas took a liberal bent, and his church affiliations were eclectic.
During his first trip to the United States, he was inspired by the preaching of William Ellery Channing, the fiery Unitarian minister known for his passionate opposition to slavery. In a letter to a friend, Dickens spoke of joining the Unitarian Church in part because Unitarians “[would] do something for human improvement [and practiced] Charity and Toleration” (ibid, 259).This influence shows up in the many phrases used in the titles given to critical commentary about Dickens’s work—such terms as social gospel, moral imperatives, and class consciousness.