Charles Dickens is the greatest representative of English critical realism, a classic
“brilliant school”. Charles Dickens, the great outstanding novelist of the period,
was one of the protesting liberals. Himself a member of a bourgeois family,
unexpectedly ruined, he knew first-hand the sufferings and hardship of that group.
He was born in Landport, Portsmouth. His father was a clerk in the navy Pay
debt. The little boy, weak and sensitive, was now sent to work in a blacking factory
for six shillings a week. He lived in miserable lodgings and led a half-starving
existence. His poverty, however, brought him into contract with the homes of very
poor and he saw with his own eyes all the horrors and cruelty in a large capitalist
When his father’s affairs took a turn for the better, Dickens was sent to school
In fact, his education consisted in extensive reading of miscellaneous books. After
his schooldays, he entered the employment of an attorney and in his spare time
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At the end of 19, Dickens became a parliamentary reporter. This work led naturally
to journalism and journalism to novel-writing. (At the beginning of the forties
Dickens made a journey to the USA after which his faith in the ideas of bourgeois
democracy was considerably shaken. The result of the journey came in two works -
“American Notes” and the novel “Martin Chuzzlewit”).
His first novel “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” appeared in 1836.
This work at once lifted Dickens into the foremost rank as a popular writer of
fiction. He followed up this triumph with a quick succession of outstanding novels
in which he masterly depicted the life of contemporary society.
“The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” recounted the droll adventures of
the four intimate friends, the representatives of the middle class. Dickens stressed
the comedy side of life, people were convulsed with laughter at the droll
characters, the comical dialogues and the ludicrous incidents.
Besides its humor the novel was a success as it depicted everyday life and
everyday people. On the whole the novel is a humorous and optimistic epopee of
the contemporary life though the author touched some social problems: English
court and justice, the episode of election and others.
Charles Dickens is famous as one of the world’s best humorists, but among his
humorous books there is only one that can be called essentially humorous, and that
is his earliest novel “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”. Dickens
proceeded through novel after novel to create over a thousand characters, no two of
whom are alike, all interesting and individual, even if often exaggerated and
caricatured.
Dickens’ characters - humorous, comic or brutal live in the memory as living
types.
As elsewhere the Pickwickians are shown in the novel as men who are utterly
unpractical and unable to perform the simplest things, without being assisted or
guided. To render the description more humorous Dickens makes his characters
behave in the most serious and even solemn manner. This contradicting manner of
presentation is one of the most characteristic features of Dickens’ style in “The
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”.
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