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Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

 

English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Charles Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens's good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. (from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, with introduction and notes by Andrew Lang, with illustrations by Charles Green, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899, p. 70; first published in serialized form in 1860-61)

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth. Like David Copperfield, Dickens was born on Friday. In the opening of the novel he wrote: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that situation will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clok at night." (David Copperfield, with an introduction and notes by Jeremy Tambling, revised edition, London: Penguin Books, 2004, p. 13; first published 1850) Dickens was a small, sicly child. An illness left him lame in left foot.

Elizabeth, Dickens's mother, was twenty-three. Her maiden name was Barrow. John Dickens, his father, was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 the family moved to London, and then to Chatham, where Dickens received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to his talented student, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father was in Marshalea debtor's prison. "My father and mother were quite satisfied," Dickens later recalled bitterly. "They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge." (The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster, edited and annotated with an introduction by J. W. T. Ley, London: Cecil Palmer, 1928, p. 25) Later this period found its way to the novel Little Dorritt (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.

In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk, and then a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. After learning shorthand, he could take down speeches word for word. At the age of eighteen, Dickens applied for a reader's ticket at the British Museum, where he read with eager industry the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith's History of England, and Berger's Short Account of the Roman Senate. He wrote for True Sun (1830-32), Mirror of Parliament (1832-34), and the Morning Chronicle (1834-36). Dickens gained soon the reputation as "the fastest and most accurate man in the Gallery," and he could celebrate his prosperity with "a new hat and a very handsome blue cloak, with velvet facings," as one of his friend described his somewhat dandyish outlook. (The Life of Charles Dickens, p. 67)  In the 1830s Dickens contributed to Monthly Magazine, and The Evening Chronicle and edited Bentley's Miscellany.

These years left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious attitude towards unjust laws. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodicals. 'A Dinner at Poplar Walk' was Dickens's first published sketch. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine in December 1833. Its publication had a deep and profound effect on him. "I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there." (Charles Dickens: The Story of His Life by [John Camden Hotten], New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870, p. 17)  Sketches by Boz, illustrated by George Cruikshank, was published in book form in 1836-37. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837.

Dickens's relationship with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, whom he had courted for four years, ended in 1833. Three years later Dickens married Catherine Hogart, the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, who edited the newly established Evening Chronicle. With Catherine he had 10 children; she had dozen or so pregnancies in fifteen years. As she grew more exhausted, Dickens's attention to other women grew more active.

Catherine's younger sister Mary began living with the Dickenses soon after the birth of Charley in 1837. Her sudden death by a fatal heart attack devastated Dickens so" much that he break of his work on Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. Trying to cure Catherine of her headaches and insomnia, Dickens regularly mesmerised his wife. H.B. Fantham has suggested in 'Charles Dickens: A biological study of his personality' (1934) that she suffered  from thyroid dysfunction. At one point Dickens schemed to have his wife consigned to a mental asylum. They separated in 1858; Dickens left their house without informing her in advance, and he never saw her again. Catherine received a substantian annual income.

None of Dickens's children inherited their father's overwhelming energy or literary talent. The Dickens boys were on the whole ordinary. Two of them died young, Walter in the army in India, Sydney at sea. Henry Fielding Dickens – "The Jolly Postboy" and "The Comic Countryman" – studied at Cambridge and enjoyed a successful career as a barrister. Mamie, rumoured to have lesbian tendencies, never found happiness in her personal life.

Some biographers have suspected that Dickens was more fond of Catherine's sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837 at the age of 17 in Dickens's arms. Eventually she became the model for Dora Copperfield. Dickens also wanted to be buried next to her and wore Mary's ring all his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s.

Dickens's sharp ear for conversation helped him to create colorful characters through their own words. In his daily writing Dickens followed certain rules: "He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and, though no precisian, it was not often that arrangements varied. His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done, no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. The order and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules laid down for himself—rules well studied beforehand, and rarely departed from. " (anonymous friend, in The Dickens Companion: A Book of Anecdote and Reference by J. A. Hamilton, Educational Book Company, 1910, p. 40)

The Pickwick Papers were stories about a group of rather odd individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath, and elsewhere. It was sold at 1 shilling the installment (1836-37), and opened up a market for similar inexpensive books. Many of Dickens's following novels first appeared in monthly installments, including Oliver Twist (1837-39). It depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, whose right to his inheritance is kept secret by the villainous Mr. Monks. Oliver suffers in a poorfarm and workhouse. He outrages authorities by asking a second bowl of porridge. From a solitary confinement he is apprenticed to a casket maker, and becomes a member of a gang of young thieves, led by Mr. Fagin. Finally Fagin is hanged at Newgate and Mr. Barnlow adopts Oliver. Fagin, drawn from theatrical villains and the medieval Jew-devil, is one of the most notorious anti-Jewish literary stereotypes of the nineteen century. A Jewish reader, Eliza Davis, wrote to Dickens, saying that he had "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew!"  (Charles Dickens and His Jewish Characters, with an introduction by Cumberland Clark, London: Chiswick Press, 1918, p. 7)

Following the author's portrayal of the horrible living conditions of the urban poor, attention was drawn to the slums of the city. Dickens's account of Jacob's Island on the banks of the Thames stirred a heated public controversy – its reality came as a shock to his middle-class and upper-class readers. Sir Peter Laurie, a politician and former Lord Mayor of London, even declared that there was no such place as Jacob's Island in London. By 1867, the whole slum was cleared and Dickens could note in a new preface to the book, that the place was now "improved and much changed." Karl Marx said that Dickens has "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together." (quoted in Dickens: A Memoir of Middle Age by Peter Ackroyd, London: Vintage Books, 2012, p. 380)

David Lean's dark, atmospheric version of Oliver Twist from 1948 is among the best films made from Dickens's novels. Lean's young thieves are as hard and professional as the brutal gang members of Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (1950). Alec Guinness played the old, big-nosed Fagin. The caricature upset some Jews in England, as Dickens's novel had done one hundred and ten years earlier. The Zionists protested that the character was presented in the same way that Jews were vilified in the Nazi paper Der Sturmer. American critics attacked the film's alleged anti-Semitism, and cuts were made before it was shown, with twelve minutes missing, in the American theatres. Lean's stylised Great Expectations (1946), based on Dickens's novel, had been a great success in the U.S. "Grandfather would have loved it," said Monica Dickens, the great-granddaughter of the author, of the film. With these works Lean has been considered an authority on Dickens.

John Forster, Dickens's friend and biographer, recalled that the author "had something of a hankering" after ghosts, and "such was his interest generally in things supernatural that, but for the strong restraining power of his common sense, he might have fallen into the follies of Spiritualism". (Investigations and fictions: Charles Dickens and ghosts' by Louise Henson, in The Victorian Supernatural, edited by Nicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett and Pamela Thurschwell, 2004,  p. 44) With A Christmas Carol (1843) Dickens brought back the tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time. The character of Ebenezer Scrooge, the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching" miser, has attracted such actors as Seymour Hicks, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, George C. Scott and Alastair Sim. In a pornography version from 1975 Mary Stewart was "Carol Screwge". One of Dickens's cats, Bob, was named after Bob Cratchit, Stooge's assistant. Bob used to walk all over his writings. When the cat died Dickens's sister-in-law had his pawn made into the handle of a letter opener.

Nicholas Nickelby (1838-39), which again took up the theme of child abuse, was a loosely structured tale of young Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune. Historical subjects did not much interest Dickens. Barnaby Rudge (1841), set at the time of the 'No Popery' riots of 1780, and A Tale of Two Cities (1859) are exceptions. The latter was set in the years of the French Revolution. The plot circles around the look-alikes Charles Darnay, a nephews of a marquis, and Sydney Carton, a lawyer, who both love the same woman, Lucy.

Among Dickens's later works is David Copperfield (1849-50), where he used his own personal experiences of work in a factory. David's widowed mother marries the tyrannical Mr. Murdstone. David becomes friends with Mr. Micawber and his family. "I went in, and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing short-collar on." (David Copperfield, introduction and notes bt Adrienne E. Gavin, illustrations by H. K. Browne (Phiz), Wordsworth Classics, 1999, p. 136) Dora, David's first wife, dies and he marries Agnes. He pursues his career as a journalist and later as a novelist.

Bleak House (1853) belongs to Dickens's greatest works of social social criticism. The novel is built around a lawsuit, the classic case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which affects all who come into contact with it. Much of the story is narrated in the first person by a young woman, Esther Summerson, the illegitimate daughter of the proud Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon. The character of Harold Skimpole, an irresponsinbe and lecherous idler, is said to be based on the poet and journalist Leigh Hunt.

Great Expectations (1860-61) began as a serialized publication in Dickens's periodical All the Year Round on December 1, 1860. The story of Pip (Philip Pirrip) was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. G.K. Chesterton wrote that it has "a quality of serene irony and even sadness," which according to Chesterton separates it from Dickens's other works. "Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip."(from Great Expectations, p. 2)

Pip, an orphan, lives with his old sister and her husband. He meets an escaped convict named Abel Magwitch and helps him against his will. Magwitch is recaptured and Pip is taken care of Miss Havisham. He falls in love with the cold-hearted Estella, Miss Havisham's ward. With the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip is properly educated, and he becomes a snob. Magwitch turns out to be the benefactor; he dies and Pip's "great expectations" are ruined. He works as a clerk in a trading firm, and marries Estella, Magwitch's daughter.

Dickens participated energetically in all forms of the social life of the time, "light and motion flashed from every part of it," wrote his friend and future biographer John Forster. In the 1840s Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the London Daily News. He spent much time travelling and campaigning against many of the social evils with his pamphlets and other writings. When he toured in America in 1842 and saw slavery at first hand, he wrote angry articles against it.

In the 1850s Dickens was founding editor of Household World and its successor All the Year Round (1859-70). Although Dickens's works as a novelist are now best remembered, he produced hundreds of essays and edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. Dickens distinguished himself as an essayist in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. 'A Visit to Newgate' (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. 'A Small Star in the East' reveals the working conditions on mills and 'Mr. Barlow' (1869) draws a portrait of an insensitive tutor.

The landscape and architecture of London influenced Dickens's work throughout his literary career. Most of his life he lived in London and had an obsession with walking through the busy, noisy city streets, "which would act on him like a tonic and enable him to take up with new vigour the flagging interest of his story and breathe new life into its pages." (Mrs. Kate Perugini [Catherine Dickens] in Dickens and Daughter by Gladys Storey, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1971, p. 92; first published 1939) Occasionally, he walked with Wilkie Collins. Dickens spoke quickly with a slight lisp. He always dressed very carefully. To protect his weak kidney, Dickens wore a broad flannel belt around his waist.

Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral evoked thoughts of time and place. ". . . let it night or nood, to-morrow or to-day, this year or next-it still performed its functions with the same dull constancy, and regulated the progress of the life around, the fancy came upon me that this was London's Heart, and that when it should cease to beat, the City would be no more," he wrote of St Paul's clock. (Master Humphrey's Clock: Vol. I., London: Chapman and Hall, MDCCCXL, p. 226) Paul Dombey, Jr. associates the Thames with darkness in Dombey and Son: "His fancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river, which he knew was flowing through the great city; and now he thought how black it was, and how deep it would look, reflecting the hosts of stars — and more than all, how steadily it rolled away to meet the sea." (Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation, with 40 illustrations by Phiz, London: Chapman & Hall, 1913, p. 189) After visiting Newgate Prison Pip feels himself contaminated in Great Expectations and  beats the prison dust of his feet. Oliver Twist accompanies his guardian to Newgate to see Fagin hanged. Ralph Nickleby lived in Golden Square – "Its boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little wilderness of schrubs, in the centre of the square." (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, edited by Boz," with illustrations by "Phiz, London: Chapman and Hall, MDCCCXXXIX, pp. 5-6)

Dickens resided in 1844-45 in Italy, Switzerland and Paris, and from 1860 one his address was at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent, where he lived with his two daughters and sister-in-law. He had also other establishments – Gad's Hill, and Windsor Lodge, Peckham, which he had rented for Ellen Ternan. His wife Catherine lived at the London house. In 1858-68 Dickens gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States. By the end of his last American tour, Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. In an opium den in Shadwell, Dickens saw an elderly pusher known as Opium Sal, who then featured in his mystery novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He collapsed at Preston, in April 1869, after which his doctors put a stop to his public performances.

Dickens died at Gadshill on suddenly of a stroke on June 8, 1870. "I made it my business," his daughter Mamie wrote in her little memoir, "to guard the beloved body as long as it was left us. The room in which my dear father reposed for the last time was bright with the beautiful fresh flowers which were so abundant at this time of the year, and which our good neighbours sent to us so frequently. The birds were singing all about and the summer sun shone brilliantly." (My Father as I Recall Him by Mamie Dickens, London: Roxburghe Press, 1896, p. 124) Some of Dickens's friends later thought the readings killed him. Dickens had asked that he should be buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner. His body was brought from Gad's Hill to London and transported to Westminster Abbey for burial. A death mask was made although it was known that he hated masks.

Our Mutual Friend (1865), the second last novel Dickens wrote, started with a murder mystery. A drowned man is found floating on Thames. The Italian writer Italo Calvino called the novel "an unqualified masterpiece". ". . .  in the black humour of Dickens' late works we can discern a definitive foretaste of Beckett." (Why Read the Classics?, translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin, New York: Pantheon Books, 1999, p. 146) The Mystery of Edwin Drood was published in 1870, but Dickens did not manage to finish it. He planned to produce it in 12 monthly parts, but completed only six numbers. In March 1870 Dickens had given a private reading to Queen Victoria and offered her the opportunity to know in advance, how the story would conclude. The Queen declined.

The novel is chiefly set in the cathedral city of Cloisterham. The story opens in an opium den. "Through the ragged window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red sj)ark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her." (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with twelve illustrtations by S. L. Fildes, and a portrait, London: Chapman and Hall, 1870, p. 1) The choirmaster of the cathedral, John Jaspers, lives a double life, as an opium addict and a respected member of society. His ward, Edwin Drood, disappears on Christmas Eve, after a quarrel with Neville Landless. However, there is no trace of Edwin's body. Dick Datchery, a disguised detective arrives to investigate the case. "It is the complex nature of Dickens's evil men, not their merited fate, that makes them the peers of Dostoyevsky's lost souls. For this reason, I have always been irked by the critical treatment of his last novel as a pure whodunit. ''Endings'' were not his strong suit." (Angus Wilson in The New York Times, March 1, 1981)

For further reading: Dickens's Idiomatic Imagination: The Inimitable and Victorian Body Language by Peter J. Capuano (2023); Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens's London by Lee Jackson (2023); Reading Dickens Differently, edited by Leon Litvack and Nathalie Vanfasse (2020); The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens' Unfinished Novel and Our Endless Attempts to End It by Pete Orford (2018); The Great Charles Dickens Scandal by Michael Slater (2012); A Guide to Dickens' London by Daniel Tyler (2012); Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens by Robert Gottlieb (2012); Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (2011); Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin (2011); Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (2002); Dickens and the 1830s by Kathryn Chittick (1991); Dickens by Peter Acroyd (1990); The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (1990); Dickens on America and the Americans, edited by Michael Slater (1979); Dickens and Charity by Norris Pope (1979); Charles Dickens as Familiar Essayist by Gordon Spence (1977); The World of Charles Dickens by Angus Wilson (1970); Dickens the Craftsman: Strategies of Presentation, edited by Robert B. Partlow, Jr. (1970); The Inimitable Dickens by A.E. Dyson (1970); Dickens at Work by Kathleen Tillotson and John Butt (1957); Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson (1953); The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster (1872-74). 

Selected works:

  • Sketches by Boz, 1836
  • The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836-37
    - Pickwick-Klubin muistelmat (suom. O.A. Joutsen, 1907) / Pickwick-kerhon jälkeenjääneet paperit (suom. Eino Palola, 1932; Marja Helanen-Ahtola, 1978)
    - film 1954, directed by Noel Langley
  • The Adventures of Oliver Twist, 1837-39
    - Oliver Twist: kuvaus Lontoon elämästä (suom. Werner Andelin, 1895-96) / Oliver Twist (suom. Maini Palosuo, 1954; Juhani Lindholm, 2001)
    - films: 1916, dir. James Young; 1921, dir. Millard Webb; 1922, dir. by Frank Lloyd, starring Jackie Coogan, Lon Chaney; 1933, dir. Willam Cowen; 1948, dir. David Lean, starring Alec Guinness, Robert Newton; musical film 1968: Oliver!, dir.  Carol Reed, starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed; television film 1982, dir. by Clive Donner, starring George C. Scott, Tim Curry; Oliver and Company, animated feature 1988, dir. George Scribner; animation film 1991, dir.  Fernandez Ruiz; Twist, 2003, dir. Jacob Tierney, starring Joshua Close, Nick Stahl, Gary Farmer, Michèle-Barbara Pelletier; Boy Called Twist, 2004, dir. Tim Greene, starring Jarrid Geduld; 2005, dir.  Roman Polanski, starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Harry Eden, Jamie Forman
  • The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39
    - Nicholas Nicklebyn elämä ja seikkailut (suom. Kersti Juva, 1992)
    - films: 1947, dir. Alberto Cavalcanti (can't compare with the Royal Shakespeare Company's 8,5 hour stage version); television film 2001, dir.  Stephen Whittaker, starring John Dallimore, James D'Arcy, Sophia Myles, Diana Kent; 2002, dir. Douglas McGrath, starring Stella Gonet, Andrew Havill, Henry McGrath, Hugh Mitchell, Poppy Rogers
  • The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841
    - films: 1978 musical version Mr. Quilp, retitled The Old Curiosity Shop, dir.  Michael Tuchner, starring Anthony Newley, David Hemmings; remade for cable in 1995, dir. Kevon Connor, starring Peter Ustinov, James Fox
  •  Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, 1841
  • American Notes: For General Circulation, 1842
    - Huomioita Amerikasta (suom. Ville-Juhani Sutinen, 2015)
  • A Christmas Carrol, 1843
    - Joulun-aatto (suom. Waldemar Churberg, 1878) Joulu-ilta (suom. Konstantin Wyyryläinen, 1893) / Jouluaatto: aavetarina jouluksi (suom. Werner Anttila, 1932) / Joululaulu: aavetarina joulusta (suom. Marja Helanen-Ahtola, 1984) / Joululaulu (suom. Tero Valkonen, 2001) / Saiturin joulu (suom. Antti Autio, 2007)
    - films: Scrooge: or Marley's Ghost, 1901, dir. W.R. Booth; A Christmas Carol, 1908; A Christmas Caril, 1910; Scrooge, 1913, dir. Leedham Bantock; A Christmas Carol, 1914, dir. Harold Shaw; Scrooge, 1922, dir. George Wynn; Scrooge, 1923, dir. Edwin Greenwood; Scrooge, 1928, dir. Hugh Croise; A Dickensian Fantasy, 1933, dir. by Aveling Ginever; Scrooge, 1935, dir. Henry Edwards; A Christmas Carol, 1938, dir. Edwin L. Marin; Leyenda de Navidad, 1947, dir. Manuel Tamayo; Scrooge, 1951, dir. Brian Desmond-Hurst, original British title Scrooge; A Christmas Carol, 1960, dir. Robert Hardford-Davis; Scrooge, 1970, dir. Ronald Neame, starring Albert Finney, Alec Guinness; The Passions of Carol, 1975, dir.  Amanda Barton; television film 1984, dir. Clive Donner, starring George C. Scott, Nigel Davenport; modernized film adaptation under the title Scrooged, 1988, dir. Richard Donner, starring Bill Murray, Karen Allen; The Muppet Christmas Carol, 1992, dir. Brian Henson
  • The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843-44
  • The Chimes, 1845
    - Kellot (suom. Olli, 1906) /  Joulukellot (suom. Werner Anttila, 1933)
  • The Cricket on the Heart, 1846
    - Kotisirkka (suom. Ellei, 1870; Werner Anttila, 1934) / Älä rakasta minua vielä (suom. Tuikku Ljunberg, 2008)
  • Pictures from Italy, 1846
  • Dombey and Son, 1848
    - Dombey ja poika (suom. Aino Tuomikoski, 1925)
    - films: 1919, dir. Maurice Elvey, starring Norman McKinnel; TV series 1969, dir. Joan Craft; TV series 1983, dir. Rodney Bennett; TV film Dombais et fils, 2007, dir. Laurent Jaoui
  • David Copperfield, 1849
    - David Copperfield nuoremman elämäkertomus ja kokemukset (suom. Waldemar Churberg, 1879) / David Copperfield (suom. J.A. Hollo, 1924; Heidi Järvenpää, 1971)  
    -
    films: 1935, dir. George Cukor, starring Freddie Bartholomew, W.C. Fields, Frank Lawton, Lionel Barrymore; television film 1970, dir. Delbert Mann, starring Robin Phillips, Susan Hampshire, Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans; television film 1999, dir. Emilia Fox, Pauline Quirke, Maggie Smith, John Normington, Daniel Radcliffe; television film 2000, dir. Peter Medak, starring Michael Richards, Eileen Atkins, Anthony Andrews, Frank MacCusker, Hugh Dancy; TV drama 2009, dir. Ambrogio Lo Giudice, starring Giorgio Pasotti; 2020, dir. Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel (as David Copperfield), Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi, Ben Whishaw 
  • A Child's History of England, 1851-53
  • Bleak House, 1853
    - Kolea talo (suom. Kersti Juva, 2006)
    - films: 1920, dir. Maurice Elvey, starring Constance Collier, Berta Gellardi, E. Vivian Reynolds; 1922, dir. H.B. Parkinson, starring Betty Doyle, Sybil Thorndike, Stacey Gaunt; 1926, dir. Lee De Forest, Widgey R. Newman; television drama 2005, dir. Justin Chadwick, Susanna White, starring Anna Maxwell Martin, Denis Lawson, Carey Mulligan, Patrick Kennedy, Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance
  • Hard Times: For These Times, 1854
  • Little Dorrit, 1855-57
    - Pikku Dorritt (suom. Helena Kesäniemi, 1926; E.H., 1926-27)
    - films: TV film La petite Dorrit, 1961, dir. Pierre Badel; film 1988, dir. Christine Eszart, starring Derek Jacobi, Alec Guinness; TV mini-series 2008, teleplay by Andrew Davies
  • The Frozen Deep, 1857 (play)
  • A Tale of Two Cities, 1859
    - Kaksi kaupunkia (suom. Saimi Järnefelt, 1903; Werner Anttila, 1930; Helka Varho, 1945)
    - films: 1917, dir. Frank Lloyd; 1935, dir. Jack Conway, starring Ronald Colman, Elisabeth Allan, Basil Rathbone; 1958, dir.  Ralph Thomas, starring Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker; television film 1980, dir.  Peter Cushing
  • The Uncommercial Traveller, 1860
  • 'Night Walks,' 1860 (in All The Year Round, 65/1860) - 'Kuutamokävelyllä' (suom. Jussi Korhonen, teoksessa Kävelyretkiä Lontoon kaduilla, 2019; 'Eksyksissä' (Gone Astray), 'Wappingin köyhäintalo' (Wapping Workhouse), 'Pieni itäinen tähti' (A Small Star in the East), 'Harrastelijan kierros' (On an Amateur Beat), 'Edesmenneiden kaupunki' (City of the Absent), 'Syrjäkujilla' (Shy Neighbourhoods), 'Öykkäri' (The Ruffian))
  • Reprinted Pieces, 1861
  • Great Expectations, 1861 (published by Chapman & Hall)
    - Suuria odotuksia (suom. Alpo Kupiainen, 1934) / Loistava tulevaisuus (suom. Maini Palosuo, 1960) 
    - films: 1917, dir.  Robert G. Vignola; 1934, dir. Stuart Walkerr; 1946, directed by David Lean, starring John Mills, Valerie Hobson; 1998, dir. Alfonso Cuarón, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke, Anne Bancroft; TV Mini-Series 2011, starring Douglas Booth, Jack Roth, Ray Winstone; 2012, dir. Mike Newell, starring Toby Irvine, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Flemyng; 2013, dir. Graham McLaren, starring Jack Ellis, Christopher Ellison, Paula Wilcox
  • Our Mutual Friend, 1865
  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870
    - Edwin Droodin arvoitus (suom. Risto Lehmusoksa, 1973)
    - films: 1935, dir. Stuart Walker, starring Claude Rains, Douglass Montgomery, Heather Angel; 1993, dir. Timothy Forder, starring Gareth Arnold, Gemma Craven, Michelle Evans, Barry Evans, Ronald Fraser, Emma Healey; TV Mini-Series, 2012, starring Matthew Rhys, Freddie Fox, Tamzin Merchant, Rory Kinnear
  • Speeches, Letters and Sayings, 1870
  • Collected Works Editions: Charles Dickens Edition, 1867-75 (21 vols.); Nonesuch Press edition 1937-38 (23 vols.); The New Oxford illustrated Dickens, 1947-58 (21 vols.); The Clarendon Dickens, 1966- (in progress)
  • To Be Read At Dusk, and other Stories, Sketches and Essays, 1898
  • Miscellaneous Papers, 1908 (2 vols.)
  • Uncollected Writings from "Household Words," 1850-59, 1970 (edited by Harry Stone)
  • The Supernatural Short Stories Of Charles Dickens, 1979 (edited by Michael Hayes)
  • A December Vision: His Social Journalism, 1986 (edited by Neil Philip and Victor Neuburg)
  • Dickens's Journalism, 1993-2000 (4 vols., eds. Michael Slater and John. Drew)
  • The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1965-2002 (the Pilgrim edition; 12 vols.)
  • Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published 1833-1836, 2012 (edited with an introduction and notes by Robert C. Hanna)
  • A Tale of Two Cities: Authoritative Text, Context, Criticism, 2020 (edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst)
  • The Uncommercial Traveller, 2021 (edited by Daniel Tyler)


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