Vita di Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. When he was ten the family moved to London where he was given regular schooling until his father was sent to prison for debts. At the age of twelve Charles was forced to go to work in a factory. The experience was traumatic. The prison, the poor quarters of London, the life in the city streets and the other boys working in the factory remained in his mind and profoundly influenced his novels.

At the age of fourteen he went to work as a clerk in a legal office. He also wrote for the comic newspapers and entered serious journalism. He travelled in the United States. Italy and France and wrote many novels. His most important novels are Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin chuzzlewi, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Hard times.

Dickens was deeply conscious of social injustice, political incompetence, poverty and suffering of the great mass of the people and the class conflicts of Victorian England. The result was an increasingly critical attitude towards contemporary society. For example, in Hard Times, he recounts the sufferings of the factory system and the harm done by the utilitarian philosophy.

Dickens’ most typical sceneries are those of London: the vast and crowded city where different classes and social groups lived next to each other and yet were not able to communicate.

Dickens was a great entertainer who created lively unforgettable characters; especially eccentrics, vagabonds, criminals, orphans.

He portrays a vivid picture of the Victorian England. His characters are mainly from the lower and middle classes, and their physical features, their ways of dressing and moving and their accents have been successfully captured by Dickens.