Charles Dickens' London Home, Christmas Tour - Literary Giant, Victorian Era Social Critic 📚

[appalachiablue]

🎄 Holiday tour of Charles Dickens' home in Victorian London - 48 Doughty Street - preserved as the Charles Dickens Museum. Explore rooms where Dickens lived and wrote during the 1830s, a period when he completed the Pickwick Papers and wrote much of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. (17 mins).

In addition to his reputation as a literary figure, Charles Dickens was a prominent social justice campaigner. He was a man shaped by childhood poverty, domestic life, grief and a deep concern for social justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
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- Charles Dickens As Social Commentator and Critic, The Victorian Web.🖋

Dickens was not only the first great urban novelist in England, but also one of the most important social commentators who used fiction effectively to criticize economic, social, and moral abuses in the Victorian era.

Dickens showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of English society, and contributed to several important social reforms. Dickens’s deep social commitment and awareness of social ills are derived from his traumatic childhood experiences when his father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison under the Insolvent Debtors Act of 1813, and he at the age of twelve worked in a shoe-blacking factory.

In his adult life Dickens developed a strong social conscience, an ability to empathise with the victims of social and economic injustices. In a letter to his friend Wilkie Collins dated Sept. 6, 1858, Dickens writes of the importance of social commitment: “Everything that happens […] shows beyond mistake that you can’t shut out the world; that you are in it, to be of it; that you get yourself into a false position the moment you try to sever yourself from it; that you must mingle with it, and make the best of it, and make the best of yourself into the bargain” (Marlow, 132).

Dickens believed in the ethical and political potential of literature, and the novel in particular, and he treated his fiction as a springboard for debates about moral and social reform. In his novels of social analysis Dickens became an outspoken critic of unjust economic and social conditions. His deeply-felt social commentaries helped raise the collective awareness of the reading public.

Dickens contributed significantly to the emergence of public opinion which was gaining an increasing influence on the decisions of the authorities. Indirectly, he contributed to a series of legal reforms, including the abolition of the inhumane imprisonment for debts, purification of the Magistrates’ courts, a better management of criminal prisons, and the restriction of the capital punishment...
https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html

[quaint]

1. According to some scholars, racist and misogynistic as well.

[appalachiablue]

2. That's unfortunate and too common in the time of abuses in the era colonial

of the British Empire and other powers esp. European. Hopefully Dickens' message of justice for a better life can be extended to all people

[quaint]

4. Agree, it was the times.

They say he treated his wife horribly but that does not translate to all women for me.
Some say he used stereotypes of good woman/bad woman to get his social justice message out.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Fascinating, not enough is taught or known about Dickens

I power read (quick as possible, no time for thought) a bio of Dickens a few years back, I'm pretty sure it was this one: Since 2002, prominent new biographies of Charles Dickens include Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life (2011).

She didn't mention Dickens' tour of America (1842), surely few Americans know that detail. But she sure cut new material with the lectures at Birmingham, and his household.

5 thumbs up for the OP!

[appalachiablue]

5. Thanks for commenting! This post made me look more into Dickens life and work. I knew that

Charles left his wife Ellen for a younger woman actress. I didn't know that he cut off his children. Not good Charles.. so, no Husband and Father of the Year award.

His writings on travels to America are interesting although he complains a lot about America - especially the capital, Washington D.C.'s bare city offerings and mucky, raw streets. Dickens made a point to visit the south. In Richmond, Va. he was understandably appalled at the harsh conditions of slavery he witnessed there.

Did Charles forget that America was a NEW country with a NEW capital city unlike ancient London? Also that the English were the first to bring slaves to Britain's North American colonies as well as to Jamaica, Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean.

Well, that's all for now until I read more...

- Explore Charles Dickens' travels in America and Canada. First American Visit - 1842. See 2nd American visit. On Jan. 3, 1842, Charles Dickens, a month shy of his 30th birthday, sailed from Liverpool on the steamship Britannia bound for America...
https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-in-america.html

- Dickens in America is a 2005 television documentary following Charles Dickens's travels across the U.S. in 1842, during which the young journalist penned a travel book, American Notes for General Circulation.
It is hosted by British actress Miriam Margolyes, a lifelong fan of Dickens, and intersperses history with travelogue and interviews. It was produced by Lion Television Scotland for BBC Four. Nathaniel Parker provided the voice of Dickens, quoting from his texts throughout the journey...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickens_in_America