Charles Dickens : Books You Must Read
Whenever you read the word Dickensian, it refers to the works of the British writer and social critic, Charles Dickens. The word means that the literature it describes resembles to that of the Dickens’s in forms of its humble settings and the social commentary it provides. Charles’s father died when he was still a child and he had to work hard labor in his father’s stead to earn and provide for the family. He left his school but he never gave up his hobby of reading and writing. Without much formal education he came to write some of the best known and still read novels. He became successful after the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Serial publication was a thing back in the times of Queen Victori; much like how HBO releases one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm every week, Newspapers published one chapter of a novel weekly. In his life, Dickens wrote close to 20 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of short stories. Some critics consider him to be a literary genius and the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
This is one of the five novellas Dickens wrote and it was published in the year 1843. The main idea of the novel is the treatment of the unfortunates and the ability of a selfish man to redeem himself from his own selfishness. A business man is met over and over by the ghost of his former business partner every Christmas to remind him of the Christmas spirit. The businessman eventually grows out of his selfishness to become a good and giving person.
Orphan in Victorian era had difficult time living their live on the streets of London, working twelve or more labor hours in factories without any mercy, dreaming of food in many hungry sleepless nights. Oliver is one of many such children. Dickens himself had a difficult childhood. His father died when he was only 12. This tale of Oliver Twist speaks volumes about the adverse effects of industrialization in the mid-18th century. Decadence of family values and orphans and widows left on the streets to die while the rich fed on the sweats of the poor. Dickens provides a wide and vivid description of the toils of such orphans in his Oliver Twist.
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.’
The Tale of Two Cities is regarded as the best of the historical novels ever written in Victorian era. This is a story set in London and Paris before and after the French Revolution. It was the time when many aristocrats fled France in fear of being killed by the hands of Robespierre and came to London. That started a wildfire that almost brought both England and France on the verge of war. Charles Dickens wrote a timeless classic based on this whole event and I recommend you read it.
- Mukul Joshi
