Lecture Nine

Dickens—Early Works

Scope: In this lecture, we will focus on the early works of Charles Dickens, covering the period from 1833 to
1846. Dickens’s initial publications were urban sketches, and they offered early signs of his obsession with
London. As he tried his hand at longer works of fiction, Dickens experimented with many styles and forms.
Each of his early works took him in a new direction, and at times, he seemed unsure of what he wanted to
do or where he wanted to go. By the time he finished Martin Chuzzlewit in the summer of 1844, he had
reached a turning point in his career and was poised on the verge of his greatest achievements in fiction.
After lectures on Thackeray and the Brontës, who presented him with the first serious competition of his
career, we will return to Dickens, surveying those achievements and concluding the first part of our course.

Outline
I. Charles Dickens is the most important single figure in the history of English fiction, and because his
achievement is so enormous, we will need to divide his career in two.
A. In this lecture, we will consider his earliest works, following his progress from 1833 to 1846.
B. In a later lecture, we will consider the great achievements of his later years—a period that includes
Dombey and Son (1847–1848), David Copperfield (1849–1850), Bleak House (1852–1853), and Great
Expectations (1860–1861).
II. Dickens’s life story is at least as remarkable as the stories contained in his novels.
A. He was born in 1812 and died in 1870. His origins were middle-class, but he also experienced poverty
firsthand, when his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt.
B. Before his father’s arrest, Dickens had begun to dream of achieving some sort of distinction in life. Those
dreams were shattered as he was sent off to work in a factory.
C. Scholars and biographers agree that Dickens’s experience of neglect and poverty was formative, serving as
the basis for much of his later fiction.
III. Dickens began his career as an urban journalist, producing sketches and stories for several London
publications.
A. He was one of the first major writers for whom urbanization was an established fact. By the mid-1830s,
when he published his first book, the population of London was already well over 1.5 million people.
B. In a passage from a sketch called “Gin-Shops” (1835), we can see the beginnings of his later view of the
city.
1. He begins by telling us that his aim is to “sketch the bar of a large gin-shop”—but then explains that
we cannot get to our destination without passing through a “filthy and miserable” neighborhood called
the “Rookery.”
2. At first, we may be surprised by Dickens’s juxtaposition of the “wretched” Rookery with the
“splendid” interior of the gin-shop; later, we realize that the two places are closely connected, with the
slums providing customers for the gin-shop—and alcoholism keeping those customers in poverty.
3. For Dickens, it’s the business of the writer to expose such connections, to represent the city as a
whole, instead of focusing on particular neighborhoods or classes.
C. Dickens learned a great deal from writing the sketches, but he did not master the arts of extending a
narrative or developing a character.
IV. In the first decade of his career, as he tried his hand at longer works of fiction, Dickens experimented with
many different styles.
A. Each of his early works took him in a new direction, and at times, he seemed unsure of what he wanted to
do or where he wanted to go: Should he be a journalist? An editor? A playwright?
B. Through much of this period, he was not usually regarded as a novelist.
1. Contemporary reviewers still associated the form of the novel with Sir Walter Scott, whose stories had
always spanned three separate volumes.

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 2. Publication in three volumes was encouraged by the owners of circulating libraries—institutions a bit
like modern video stores—and it would remain dominant for much of the 19th century.
3. Dickens’s use of serial publication allowed him to operate outside this system, yet it also made his
works somewhat difficult to classify. Because his early works didn’t look much like novels, they were
often identified as miscellanies or magazines.
V. To flesh out our understanding of this situation, let’s consider Dickens’s first attempt at a longer, more
substantial work of fiction: The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837).
A. After a shaky beginning, Pickwick enjoyed enormous success, forging a lasting bond between Dickens and
the English reading public.
B. At no point in the course of Pickwick’s run was Dickens expected to produce anything like a novel.
Pickwick was always supposed to be a series of episodes, not an extended narrative.
VI. As Dickens worked on his next two books, he often seemed eager to establish himself as a novelist.
A. Though he first conceived of Oliver Twist (1837–1838) as a political satire, he later tried to turn the work
into a novel, adding a love story and deepening the mystery surrounding Oliver’s birth.
B. In Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839), which follows the adventures of a young man and culminates in his
marriage to his sweetheart, Dickens seemed to take another step in the direction of the novel.
C. Nevertheless, these works lacked the coherent plots of such works as Tom Jones and Waverley; thus, they,
too, were viewed as serials or miscellanies.
D. Dickens’s early works were largely improvised. He would begin with ideas for a few characters or
situations and, perhaps, with some sense of the ending, but he made up the rest on the fly.
VII. Over the next few years, Dickens would continue to experiment, producing some of the most varied and
unusual works of his career.
A. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1841), he drew much of his inspiration from fairy tales. The result was
enormously popular but also difficult to classify; critical responses were deeply divided.
B. In Barnaby Rudge (1841), his fifth major work, Dickens finally came up with something unmistakably
novelistic.
1. Barnaby Rudge, a historical novel modeled on the works of Scott, dramatized the Gordon Riots of
1780.
2. Though Dickens hoped that Barnaby Rudge would secure his reputation as a serious writer, it actually
had a different effect, alienating both readers and critics.
C. In Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–1844), Dickens returned to contemporary subjects, once again focusing on the
life and adventures of a young hero.
1. Dickens tried to give Chuzzlewit the coherence lacking in his earlier work, paying greater attention to
character development and centering the story on the larger theme of selfishness.
2. Though not a failure on the order of Barnaby Rudge, Chuzzlewit was not successful. Sales of the
opening installments were low, and reviews were mixed.
VIII. By the time Martin Chuzzlewit completed its run in the summer of 1844, Dickens had reached a turning point.
A. His initial attempts at novel-writing had been unsuccessful, and as one London paper reported, it was
becoming “the rage to decry [him].”
1. Dickens’s disappointment was deepened by the fact that he felt and knew himself to be making
progress, to be growing and developing as an artist.
2. As he worked on Chuzzlewit, Dickens had begun to develop his understanding of the novel form, in
which a narrative could be both disciplined and expansive, coherent and freewheeling.
B. In our next two lectures, we will consider the work of writers often viewed as rivals to Dickens. After those
lectures, we will return to Dickens himself, surveying his later works and assessing his most impressive
achievements in the novel form.

Essential Reading:
Charles Dickens, “Gin-Shops,” in Sketches by Boz; Oliver Twist; The Pickwick Papers.

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Supplementary Reading:
Kathryn Chittick, Dickens and the 1830s.
Grahame Smith, Charles Dickens: A Literary Life.

Questions to Consider:
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of serial publication? Why do you suppose it isn’t used more often
today?
2. How should we understand the relationship between popularity and artistic success? Many have assumed that a
writer must choose one or the other. Is that choice really necessary? Are artists always compromised by their
attempts to please the public?

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 Lecture Twelve
Dickens—Later Works

Scope: This lecture resumes our study of Dickens, covering the period from 1846 to 1870. This period begins with
Dombey and Son, Dickens’s first mature work, and includes great novels, such as Bleak House, Little
Dorrit, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend. Throughout this period, Dickens continues his
exploration of London, asserting the interconnectedness of the city’s widely separated neighborhoods and
social classes. At the same time, Dickens creates increasingly conflicted characters and endings, raising
questions that neither he nor his characters can answer. If in his early books, Dickens explores the
mysteries of London, he examines in these later works many of the deepest mysteries of life. With this
achievement, he completes the most impressive body of work in the history of English fiction and gives us
a fitting end to this first series of lectures.

Outline
I. In this lecture, we will return to Charles Dickens, taking up the second phase of his long career, from 1847
through 1870, the year of his death.
A. During this period, he produced many of his greatest novels: Dombey and Son (1847–1848), David
Copperfield (1849–1850), Bleak House (1852–1853), Little Dorrit (1855–1857), Great Expectations
(1860–1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865).
B. This period also included some of the major events from Dickens’s personal life: the collapse of his
marriage, an affair with an actress, and the incredible success of his public reading tours.
II. In our first look at Dickens, we noted that his earliest works did not always appear to be novels, and we
acknowledged the shortcomings of these works.
A. Dickens began to solve these problems in Martin Chuzzlewit, centering the novel on the theme of
selfishness, and he made further progress in writing Dombey and Son.
B. Most scholars agree that Dombey is the first work of Dickens’s artistic maturity. The novel shows his
determination to create a coherent plot and reflects significant changes in his working methods.
C. Dombey centers on the life of Paul Dombey, a wealthy London merchant.
1. The first major event is the birth of Dombey’s son—and the subsequent death of his wife in childbirth.
Later events include the death of Dombey’s son, his own remarriage, and his estrangement from his
daughter, Florence.
2. The work was a critical and commercial success, a confident return to form after the disappointments
of Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit.
III. We noted previously Dickens’s preoccupation with London, particularly his image of the city as connected and
coherent despite its surface chaos. His later elaboration of this theme may be most evident in Bleak House
(1852–1853).
A. After moving us through a beginning passage composed mainly of sentence fragments that introduce us to
the filth, mud, and fog of the city, Dickens goes on to present to the reader three distinct worlds.
1. First, we visit the legal world, the Court of Chancery, in which disputes about wills and estates are to
be settled. In practice, and in the novel as well, proceedings in Chancery could take decades.
2. Next, we visit the world of fashion, dominated by Lady Dedlock, whose husband’s family is said to be
“as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable.”
3. Finally, we are introduced to the domestic world of Esther Summerson, a young woman who is
eventually employed as housekeeper of Bleak House.
B. These worlds are so different that they cannot be described by a single narrator. The stories of the legal and
fashionable worlds are told by a third-person narrator, while the story of Esther’s domestic world is told by
Esther herself.
C. Slowly, the novel’s major locations and characters are shown to be intimately connected.
1. Lady Dedlock turns out to be Esther’s mother, and a law clerk, found dead of a drug overdose at the
end of chapter 10, is revealed to be her father

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 2. The mystery of Esther’s birth is unraveled by characters from every level of society—a police
inspector (one of the first fictional detectives) and a homeless boy play especially important parts.
D. Although we might criticize Dickens for relying on these coincidences, we see that his version of the
multiplot novel responds to the pressures of living in an increasingly fragmented society. Beneath the
chaos of a city like London, there is an underlying order.
IV. In the 1850s, Dickens experienced great changes in his personal life.
A. In 1858, he separated from his wife of 22 years, and his relationship with a young actress became the
subject of scandal and gossip for the rest of his life.
B. At that time, he also began a series of exhausting but quite successful public reading tours, not only making
Dickens a fortune but strengthening his bonds with the public.
V. Through his later novels, Dickens created increasingly conflicted characters and endings, opening up problems
that neither he nor his characters could solve.
A. At the end of an early work, such as Oliver Twist, the main character is finally safe and secure.
B. In Great Expectations, the situation is much different.
1. Like Oliver, Pip is an orphan, exposed to dangers and temptations. Raised by his sister and her
husband, he is adopted by a mysterious benefactor and sent to live as a gentleman in London.
2. Pip assumes that his benefactor is Miss Havisham, a wealthy local woman, and he falls in love with
Estella, the beautiful girl who lives with her. Pip’s dreams are shattered when he learns that his
benefactor is actually a criminal.
3. As the story unfolds, Pip is also forced to admit that Estella is incapable of returning his love. He
knows that he should give up his quest for Estella, but that knowledge does not help him control his
own desires for her.
4. Though Pip eventually finds his way to a respectable life, he never recovers from his disappointments
and failures. This is especially evident in Dickens’s original ending to the novel, which suggests that
Pip will never marry.
5. In a revised ending, though Dickens suggests a possible reunion between Pip and Estella, the situation
remains uncertain. Even if the characters do get together, it will be as survivors of a great trauma.
C. Dickens creates similar feelings at the end of Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend. In those
conclusions, marriages are celebrated, virtue rewarded, and vice punished, yet the possibilities for
fulfillment and happiness appear limited.
VI. If Dickens begins to explore the mysteries of London in his early books, he examines in these later works many
of the deepest mysteries of life.
A. Why do we want what we cannot have? How can we understand the wrongs done to us? Can we ever
break free of the past, or are we compelled to live in its shadows?
B. With this achievement, Dickens completes the most impressive body of work in the history of English
fiction and gives us a fitting end to this first series of lectures.

Essential Reading:
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Great Expectations.

Supplementary Reading:
J. Hillis Miller, Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels.
Edmund Wilson, “Dickens: The Two Scrooges,” in The Wound and the Bow.

Questions to Consider:
1. What are the signs of artistic maturity? Do artists tend to get better as they grow older and gain experience?
What is usually lost and what usually gained over the course of an artist’s career?
2. What kinds of endings now seem most satisfying to us? Are happy endings always unrealistic? Are sad or
unhappy endings always depressing?

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