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CHARLES DICKENS 
(1812-1870) 
Charles Dickens is the greatest representative of English critical realism, a classic of world 
literature. His name stands first in the list of authors belonging to the “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 Office. When the 
boy was ten years old, the family settled in a mean quarter in London. Things went from bad to 
worse until Dickens’ father was imprisoned for 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 

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very poor and he saw with his own eyes all the horrors and cruelty in a large capitalist city. He 
later described this period of his childhood. 
When his father’s affairs took a turn for the better, Dickens was sent to school where “the boys 
trained white mice much better than the master trained the boys”.
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 studied shorthand 
writing.
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”.