Dickens Charles - American notes for general circulation

AMERICAN NOTES

CHARLES DICKENS was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, the second of eight children. Dickens childhood experiences were similar to those depicted in David Copperfield. His father, who was a government clerk, was imprisoned for debt, and Dickens was briefly sent to work in a blacking warehouse at the age of twelve. He received little formal education, but taught himself shorthand and became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle. He began to publish sketches in various periodicals, which were subsequently republished as Sketches by Boz. The Pickwick Papers was published in 18367 and after a slow start became a publishing phenomenon and Dickenss characters the centre of a popular cult. Part of the secret of his success was the method of cheap serial publication he adopted; thereafter, all Dickenss novels were first published in serial form. He began Oliver Twist in 1837, followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1838) and The Old Curiosity Shop (184041). After finishing Barnaby Rudge (1841) Dickens set off for America; he went full of enthusiasm for the young republic but, in spite of a triumphant reception, he returned disillusioned. His experiences are recorded in American Notes (1842). A Christmas Carol, the first of the hugely popular Christmas Books, appeared in 1843, while Martin Chuzzlewit, which included a fictionalized account of his American travels, was first published over the period 18434. During 18446 Dickens travelled abroad and he began Dombey and Son while in Switzerland. This and David Copperfield (184950) were more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early novels. In later works, such as Bleak House (1853) and Little Dorrit (1857), Dickenss social criticism became more radical and his comedy more savage. In 1850 Dickens started the weekly periodical Household Words, succeeded in 1859 by All the Year Round; in these he published Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (186061). Dickenss health was failing during the 1860s and the physical strain of the public readings which he began in 1853 hastened his decline, although Our Mutual Friend (1865) retained some of his best comedy. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and he died on 9 June 1870. Public grief at his death was considerable and he was buried in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.

PATRICIA INGHAM is a Fellow of St Annes College, Reader in English and The Times Lecturer in English Language, at the University of Oxford. She has written extensively on the Victorian novel. Her most recent publications include Dickens, Women and Language (1992) and The Language of Gender and Class: Transformation in the Victorian Novel (1996). She has also edited Charles Dickenss Martin Chuzzlewit, Elizabeth Gaskells North and South and Thomas Hardys The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved and The Woodlanders for Penguin Classics, and is General Editor of all of Thomas Hardys fiction in the Penguin Classics Edition.

CHARLES DICKENS

For General Circulation

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

PATRICIA INGHAM

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Chapman and Hall, 1842
Published in Penguin Classics 2000
I

Introduction and Notes copyright Patricia Ingham, 2000
A Dickens Chronology copyright Stephen Wall, 1995
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EISBN: 9780141904788