Charles Dickens: A Critical Study

by G.K. Chesterton

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Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Classics, Literary Criticism, British Literature, Literature, History

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1906

About the author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic.

He was educated at St. Paul’s, and went to art school at University College London. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly.

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not really a Critical Study, as originally subtitled, Chesterton’s Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men is instead a breezy, piquant, thoroughly personal account of the delights of Dickens. It’s the alluring kind of introduction one always needs, for that author towards whom one is well disposed, but not in a panting rush to read. (I could use a book like this for Balzac.) The book’s possible fault is that it leaves you as stimulated to search out more Chesterton as more Dickens. The style is a merry joy. His sentences dance, Buck said. Happening upon this book, feeling little interest in the writer and not much urgency about the subject, a random paragraph seized me:

The optimist is a better reformer than the pessimist; and the man who believes life to be excellent is the man who alters it most. It seems a paradox, yet the reason of it is very plain. The pessimist can be enraged at evil. But only the optimist can be surprised at it. From the reformer is required a simplicity of surprise. He must have the faculty of a violent and virgin astonishment. It is not enough that he should think injustice distressing; he must think injustice absurd, an anomaly in existence, a matter less for tears than for a shattering laughter. On the other hand, the pessimists at the end of the century could hardly curse even the blackest thing; for they could hardly see it against its black and eternal background. Nothing was bad, because everything was bad. Life in prison was infamous—like life anywhere else. The fires of persecution were vile—like the stars. We perpetually find this paradox of a contented discontent. Dr. Johnson takes too sad a view of humanity, but he is also too satisfied a Conservative. Rousseau takes too rosy a view of humanity, but he causes a revolution. Swift is angry, but a Tory. Shelley is happy, and a rebel.

Before, I knew only the basics of Dickens’ biography, and nothing at all about the man. He sounds awesome:

The dress of the comfortable classes during the later years of Dickens was, compared with ours, somewhat slipshod and somewhat gaudy. It was the time of loose pegtop trousers of an almost Turkish oddity, of large ties, of loose short jackets and of loose long whiskers. Yet even this expansive period, it must be confessed, considered Dickens a little too flashy or, as some put it, too Frenchified in his dress. Such a man would wear velvet coats and wild waistcoats that were like incredible sunsets; he would wear those old white hats of an unnecessary and startling whiteness. He did not mind being seen in sensational dressing-gowns; it is said he had his portrait painted in one of them.

So far as he could prevent it, he never permitted a day of his life to be ordinary. There was always some prank, some impetuous proposal, some practical joke, some sudden hospitality, some sudden disappearance. It is related of him (I give one anecdote out of a hundred) that in his last visit to America, when he was already reeling as it were under the blow that was to be mortal, he remarked quite casually to his companions that a row of painted cottages looked exactly like the painted shops in a pantomime. No sooner had the suggestion passed his lips than he leapt at the nearest doorway and in exact imitation of the clown in the harlequinade, beat conscientiously with his fist, not on the door (for that would have burst the canvas scenery of course), but on the side of the doorpost. Having done this he lay down ceremoniously across the doorstep for the owner to fall over him if he should come rushing out. He then got up gravely and went on his way. His whole life was full of such unexpected energies, precisely like those of the pantomime clown.

Before, I wanted to re-read Great Expectations, which I remembered as an oasis of ebullience in the otherwise dour syllabus (Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss) of a long-ago college class. But Chesterton says the late works show greater plausibility and more nimble artistic control than the early, but at the expense of a riotous carnival brio. So I will go to meet Mr. Pickwick.

[Katie Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread in conjunction with The Pickwick Papers, my favorite of Dickens' works (and Chesterton's favorite as well). It had been years since I last read this book, and I only just now realized how enormously influential it has been for me, not just for my interpretation of Dickens but my understanding of literature and storytelling and even the craft of writing itself. So much of what Chesterton here praises about Dickens I have tried to emulate, consciously or unconsciously, in my own novels... even down to the deliberately exaggerated villains, which hey, if Chesterton liked them AND Dickens liked them, I think I'm pretty safe to use them. Psychological realism be damned :-P

[Plateresca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bottom line: recommended to those who love Dickens and/or Father Brown :) Read on for lovely quotes.

Chesterton says that this is a 'professedly personal judgement', and I am treating this work as such, - not as the ultimate truth about Charles Dickens and/or his works. In fact, most of the time I had the comfortable feeling that I was chatting about Dickens to Father Brown, such is the strength of my association of Chestertonian paradoxes with this beloved character. Here are some of the ones I enjoyed most:

'Swift is angry, but a Tory. Shelley is happy, and a rebel. Dickens, the optimist, satirises the Fleet, and the Fleet is gone. Gissing, the pessimist, satirisises Suburbia, and Suburbia remains.'

'Dickens had all his life the faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night. The boy in such a case exhibits a psychological paradox; he is a little too irritable because he is a little too happy. Dickens was always a little too irritable because he was a little too happy.'

'Indeed, that degree of realism does not exist in reality; it is the unbearable realism of a dream.'

'Dickens did not strictly make a literature; he made a mythology.'
(I love it that he's rather reverential of Dickens!).

'His was a character very hard for any man of slow and placable temperament to understand; he was the character whom anybody can hurt and nobody can kill.'

'He was annoyed at the ordinary annoyances: only he was more annoyed than was necessary.'

'His secret omnipresence in every house and hut of private life was more like the omnipresence of a deity.'


I've found some of these thoughts really interesting:

'We are filled with the first of all democratic doctrines, that all men are interesting; Dickens tried to make some of his people appear dull people, but he could not keep them dull.'

'Dickens's work is to be reckoned always by characters, sometimes by groups, oftener by episodes, but never by novels.'
By the way, I don't mean to say that I agree with each and every word here; just that these are interesting points to ponder upon.

'The spirit he at bottom celebrates is that of two friends drinking wine together and talking through the night.'

I must also share this quote:
'The young man with the lumpy forehead, who only says 'Esker' to Mr. Podsnap's foreign gentleman, is as good as Mr. Podsnap himself.'
Having long admired this gentleman with his 'Esker' ('Esker' being my first refuge in French in any circumstances).

'There is a current prejudice against fogs, and Dickens, perhaps, is their only poet.'

'This sentiment of the grotesqueness of the universe ran through Dickens's brain and body like the mad blood of the elves.'

'The hardest thing to remember about our own time, of course, is simply that it is a time; we all instinctively think of it as the Day of Judgment.'
And this is an inspiring thought, actually!


The study contains spoilers, but so many books and characters are mentioned that I don't think it's possible to remember most of them if you haven't read these books yet, - and if you have, well, perhaps you'll enjoy some insights into them.
I personally have read some, but not all, and I don't remember all of what I've read very well, so I'm gradually rereading; and Dickensians! is a group that's been making this experience even more enjoyable.

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesterton is a genial companion on any subject, even spanning Dickens's body of work, of which there is much I haven't read. No matter. When I work my way down to the others on my ever-expanding To-Read list, the rods of Chesterton's scaffolding may have budded to help me enjoy Dickens more. As a student of men, as well as a student of THE man Charles Dickens, Chesterton has a lot to offer. If just a little of his capacity to appraise honestly, to praise the praiseworthy and to poke gently at common human foils rubbed off on me in the reading experience, I'll be grateful.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Charles Dickens, and this biography did inform me about his life, but it compared each of his works in a way that left me confused.

I have not read every work of Dickens and maybe that is why I struggled. He compared him to many people I had never heard of. All in all I just did not enjoy this study of Dickens. Chesterton is too brilliant for me to digest his comparisons. I have to learn more in order to appreciate Chesterton's take on Dickens.
Then I will reread this book and see if I understand Chesterton better. I am glad I read it, I did not know about his father or his life on the streets.
I didn't know he was not educated until his later childhood years. Charles Dickens is a brilliant man, but I understand his work better than Chesterton. I am sure it is a case of it's not you G.K. it's me.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

2008. I was knee-deep in notes, coffee-stained printouts, and half-baked metaphors, trying to put together a paper for a local literary magazine on the cultural endurance of Dickens. The deadline loomed like a Victorian fog, thick and unforgiving.

That’s when I stumbled upon G.K. Chesterton’s Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. Not in a university library or some lofty archive, but in a friend’s personal collection—a dog-eared, marginalia-filled copy that smelled faintly of mildew and camphor, as if the book itself had taken on Dickensian airs. I picked it up absentmindedly, expecting dry scholarship. What I got instead was a literary epiphany wrapped in wit and thunderclaps.

Chesterton didn’t analyze Dickens. He resurrected him. This wasn’t a critic dissecting a corpse. This was a bard at a tavern table, pounding his mug, roaring with laughter, and pointing at Dickens like a beloved old friend: “Look at this man! Look at the soul he poured into this grimy, glorious world!” His prose danced—rich, robust, and defiantly personal. He spoke of Dickens not as a historical figure, but as a living force—the voice of the urban poor, the dreamer in a soot-streaked top hat who gave nobility to chimney sweeps and warmth to misfits.

I had read David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, but never had anyone made me see their author quite like this. Chesterton called Dickens “the great romantic realist”—a phrase that landed like a lightning bolt. I remember circling it three times in red ink. Because yes!

That was it. Dickens wasn’t naïve. He wasn’t escapist.

He simply refused to let the world lose its magic, even when buried under tenement walls and factory smoke. Chesterton captured that paradox, that tenderness in Dickens’ satire, that love in his rage.

What struck me most wasn’t the content alone but the style. Chesterton’s sentences swaggered. They didn’t apologize for being full of wonder. They made you want to write better, think deeper, laugh louder. While most critics deconstruct, he constructed mythologies. He talked of Dickens as if he were elemental—a weather system that passed through England and changed its temperature forever.

He praised Dickens’s characters not for psychological depth but for their archetypal power. Mr. Micawber wasn’t realistic—he was inevitable. Like gravity or breakfast.

That insight hit me hard. I’d been trying to write a paper that balanced Dickens’s “social criticism” with his “narrative structure” in the way I thought a proper academic should. But Chesterton cracked the walls of that neat little study room. He made me realize that loving Dickens was criticism, that affection had critical weight, that literature lived in how it made you feel, not just how it was constructed.

That piece I eventually wrote—yes, I turned it in on time—was drenched in Chesterton’s voice. It was more alive, more bold than anything I’d written before.

I quoted him liberally, of course, but more than that, I let myself be influenced by him. I let my sentences sing a bit louder. I let my Dickens breathe.

Now, when I think of Charles Dickens: A Critical Study, I don’t think of it as a book on Dickens. I think of it as a book about reading—about how to approach literature not with scalpels and goggles but with heart and thunder.

It taught me that criticism, at its best, is not dissection but communion. Chesterton didn't just help me write about Dickens—he taught me to love him anew.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an inspiration. It became obvious after one chapter that I would need to read all of Dickens. There is nothing quite like the experience of having Chesterton point you to the wonders of other writers and areas of thought. His encomium to Dickens is exemplary in this regard. It is almost a hagiography of Dickens; or perhaps I should say a theology of the world Dickens created. It cannot be fairly categorized as literary criticism, not only because Chesterton’s verdict is almost entirely positive. Yes, Chesterton is a fan, and I wish that our modern critics would feel the importance of liking a book before attempting to assess it critically. But Chesterton’s study also transcends mere categories like literary criticism because, unlike our modern critics, Chesterton feels no need to pretend that his appreciation of Dickens is disinterested. This is not to say that the book is merely fawning in its presentation. On the contrary, what Chesterton set out to do in this book was not simply to defend and praise the novels of Dickens. The deeper aim was to throw light upon the objective reality of individual greatness itself, and to point out that at the time of publication (1906), this notion was already disappearing rapidly from the mind of the English.

In the first chapter Chesterton addresses a question which was evidently a fashionable one in his day, “Why have we no great men today? Why have we no great men like Thackeray, or Carlyle, or Dickens?” He answers the question by way of introducing the thesis of the book. “Do not let us dismiss this expression, because it appears loose or arbitrary. ‘Great’ does mean something, and the test of its actuality is to be found by noting how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to some men and not to others; above all how instinctively and decisively we do apply it to four or five men in the Victorian era, of whom Dickens was not the least. The term is found to fit a definite thing. Whatever the word ‘great’ means, Dickens was what it means. Even the fastidious and unhappy who cannot read his books without a continuous critical exasperation, would use the word of him without stopping to think. They feel that Dickens is a great writer even if he is not a good writer. He is treated as a classic; that is, as a king who many now be deserted, but who cannot now be dethroned. The atmosphere of this word clings to him; and the curious thing is that we cannot get it to cling to any of the men of our own generation...[Dickens’ generation] was a world that expected everything of everybody. It was a world that encouraged anybody to be anything. And in England and literature its living expression was Dickens.”

Chesterton argues that the disappearance of Victorian greatness is mirrored by the disappearance of Christian hope, a virtue that suffused English culture in the early 19th century and was given its voice in Dickens’ novels. There was in Dickens’ characters an exuberant and irrepressible whirlwind of thoughtfulness and activity, traits whose absence from 20th-century literature (and 20th-century civilization) Chesterton lamented poignantly. “The children of [Dickens’] fancy are spoilt children. They shake the house like heavy and shouting schoolboys; they smash the story to pieces like so much furniture. When we moderns write stories our characters are better controlled. But, alas! our characters are rather easier to control. We are in no danger from the gigantic gambols of creatures like Mantalini or Micawber...When we experience the ungovernable sense of life which goes along with the old Dickens sense of liberty, we experience the best of the revolution. We are filled with the first of all democratic doctrines, that all men are interesting; Dickens tried to make some of his people appear dull people, but he could not keep them dull. He could not make a monotonous man. The bores in his books are brighter than the wits in other books.”

‘Ungovernable sense of life.’ ‘All men are interesting.’ ‘Gigantic gambols.’ How beautifully Chesterton captures Dickens’ mode, the mode of life as it is truly lived. Dickens’ characters lived as if life were intrinsically good and valuable, as if existence were irreducibly adventurous. And we feel, while reading about them, that their instincts are truer and nobler than our own, that the cynicism which pervades all popular presentations of modern life is false and noxious. Chesterton states that the declining popularity of Dickens in the early 20th century can only be explained in terms the modern conflation between realism and pessimism, as if Dickens’ literary expressions of joy were not only distastefully outmoded, but also untrue to life. He says, “Dickens overstrains and overstates a mood our period does not understand. The truth he exaggerates is exactly this old Revolution sense of infinite opportunity and boisterous brotherhood. And we resent his undue sense of it, because we ourselves have not even a due sense of it.” The modern religion is a dogma of doubt, and when the high priests of our religion run up against the wild and untamable joy of Dickens they dismiss it as fake and sentimental. Our modern unease with Dickens’ rambunctious vision of peasant happiness snatches away the mask of our liberalism: it cannot be true, we insist, that poor people are happy the way that Dickens depicts them, for if they are happy in that way, then human fulfillment must lie somewhere other than what can be furnished by godless materialism.

I went into this book very curious about what Chesterton would make of Dickens’ politics, and he does touch on that subject with a great deal of insight. The main point he makes is that the question of Dickens’ politics is basically irrelevant to any understanding of Dickens’ life and work. According to Chesterton, Dickens was blissfully and admirably apolitical. Oh how I reveled to read that judgment, and how it made me yearn for more such men, men who, as Chesterton puts it, “perceive that any theory that tries to run the living State entirely on one force and motive [is] probably nonsense.” He says that Dickens was neither a Socialist, nor a Radical, nor a Utilitarian, nor an Individualist. Instead he was a champion of common sense, and the wisdom of his world view comes across inescapably in the reading of the novels themselves. “[Dickens],” says Chesterton, “was simply a man of very clear, airy judgment on things that did not inflame his private temper...Whenever the Liberal philosophy had embedded in it something hard and heavy and lifeless, by an instinct he dropped it out. He was too romantic, perhaps, but he would have to do only with real things. He may have cared too much about Liberty. But he cared noting about ‘Laissez faire.’” How desperate we are today for men who ‘care too much about Liberty’ and care nothing about ‘laissez faire.’ More men who are immune to ideology and and open to optimism. Perhaps what made Dickens the last of the great men was his happy indifference to political nonsense.

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: As most of Chesterton biographies, this is not a typical review of the life of a person, but a critical analysis of Dickens and his work, as in fact the title indicates.

Dickens is one of Chesterton's favorite writers, as evidenced by the fact that he dedicated him two complete books: this one, published in 1905, focused on the writer, and "The works of Charles Dickens" on his work (1911). He also dedicated him several pages in "The Victorian Era in Literature" (1913), which I read recently.

The first chapter of this biography addresses an important question: why are there no longer great men like Dickens? This question has inspired me to write a post in my blog: Why we have no great men today.

Let me give a couple interesting quotes from this book:

If we find in a good book a wildly impossible character it is very probable indeed that it was copied from a real person.

Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason.

ESPAÑOL: Como casi todas las biografías de Chesterton, esta no es una "vida" típica, sino un análisis crítico del personaje, como de hecho indica el título.

Dickens es uno de los escritores favoritos de Chesterton, como demuestra el hecho de que le dedicó dos libros completos: este, publicado en 1905, al escritor, y "The works of Charles Dickens" a su obra (1911). Además le dedica varias páginas en "The Victorian Era in Literature" (1913), que he leído hace poco.

El capítulo 1 de esta biografía aborda una cuestión importante: ¿por qué ya no hay grandes hombres como Dickens? Esta pregunta me ha inspirado un artículo en mi blog: Por qué no hay grandes hombres.

Aquí pongo un par de citas interesantes sacadas de este libro:

Si encontramos en un buen libro un personaje tremendamente imposible, es muy probable que haya sido copiado de una persona real.

La crueldad hacia los animales es una cosa cruel y vil; pero la crueldad hacia un ser humano no es crueldad, es traición.

[Michael K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this eBook to be interesting, in that, it delved into the religiosity (if that is well put) of Charles Dickens and a critical study of his life and works. It was, in my view, a comparative study from a Biblical or Christian Worldview. While I am using this as part of a book I am presently working on, it really didn't give me the information that I was looking for. Though, if you are a Dickens fan then you will like the background and how some of the characters were played and worked. A good book, generally speaking.

[Abbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-4/5 stars

*The summer I finished several of the books I was supposed to read the spring semester of my senior year . . . *

As others have said in their reviews, this book is not really a "biography of Dickens," as such. It reads more like a biography of his books, at parts, with Chesterton doing psychoanalysis (he'd probably hate that I just used that word, but it's true) on why Dickens acted the way he did, wrote the way he did, and ruined his relationship with his wife and his kids. Along the way, Chesterton drops incredible one-liners full of truth and wit, but some of the one-liners about the novels do not always seem to fully match with the plot in said novel, or the point Dickens was making. If you're a fan of Dickens and Chesterton, this is the book for you. If you're looking for a critical analysis of Dickens' writings from a literary critical perspective, I'd check a Dickens or Victorian lit journal first. They're probably easier and cheaper to find, since this is out of print, and a bit more focused than this text. Worth the read for Chesterton being Chesterton.

[Jeremy]

Available here.

[Maria Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was incredibly excited to see that one of my favorite authors wrote a book about another of my favorite authors. I was incredibly disappointed to find that my favorite author Chesterton would say that I don't truly like Dickens because I primarily read and enjoy his later works. Apparently his later works are a new sort of Dickens and don't deserve to be called Dickens. Furthermore, if you love his later works, it does not necessarily mean you love Dickens...I will be reading more of his earlier works after this for sure to see if I'm inclined to agree with Chesterton.

What I highly agree with him on is that Dickens is an incredible caricaturing optimist. The hardest times are made amusing and lively by Dicken's attitude toward them. Dickens teaches us to take life lightly so that we can truly enjoy life. If we take all the wonder and joy out of living, we will certainly drive ourselves insane.

Thank you, Chesterton, for taking the time to write about our beloved Dickens.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Random rambling ruminations.

Chesterton was badly in need of an editor when he wrote this one.

There's no cohesive organization, no logical timeline of the development of his works, no extensive analyzation of his personal character in relation to his protagonists. Chesterton seems to adore Dickens's place in the cannon, and admits some faults, but doesn't give plain reasons for Dickens's style choices. He just goes right on praising him anyway. I remain an unconverted loather of Dickens.

I learned next to nothing new about Dickens after reading these couple hundred pages. Sometimes a notable quote or two would come out, but this is not one of Chesterton's finest. There was so much in here that a modern editor would have chopped out. I feel like Chesterton sat down a couple times at a creaky desk with a dip pen, rambled out some of his favorite things about Dickens without bothering to re-read anything, stuck it in an envelope, and sent it to a publisher without looking back.

I was all excited when I found a biography of Dickens written by Chesterton, but now I'm glad it's over, and I regret pulling it randomly off the shelf.

One quote that I actually liked:

"In one sense things can only be equal if they are entirely different. Thus, for instance, people talk with a quite astonishing gravity about the inequality or equality of the sexes; as if there could possibly be any inequality between a lock and a key. Wherever there is no element of variety, wherever all the items literally have an identical aim, there is at once and of necessity inequality. A woman is only inferior to man in the matter of being not so manly; she is inferior in nothing else. Man is inferior to woman in so far as he is not a woman; there is no other reason. And the same applies in some degree to all genuine differences. It is a great mistake to suppose that love unites and unifies men. Love diversifies them, because love is directed towards individuality. The thing that really unites men and makes them like to each other is hatred.... As competition means always similarity, it is equally true that similarity always means inequality. If everything is trying to be green, some things will be greener than others; but there is an immortal and indestructible equality between green and red."

[Johan Haneveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite author on my wife's favorite author. What's not to like?
Chesterton is always very readable, suffusing his text with metafors, illustrations, paradoxes, connections, and witticisms, but make a whole lotta sense, at least to me. He uses the life and works of Dickens as a springboard to discuss many different subjects, and it all makes sense. It's also very clear that Chesterton admires Dickens, is a fan (he has written more on him, even fanfiction!), but also has an eye for his shortcomings. I was glad that I had read five novels of Dickens before starting out on this one (especially David Copperfield), but I think that to really appreciate Chestertons work here one has to read more (I was especially handicapped by not having read The Pickwick Papers, an omission I hope to rectify in the near future!). Chesterton seems to be a fan of the Pickwick Papers especially. I wished I had kept a notebook with me while reading this book, as there's a lot in here I would like to remember. So I'll read it again when I've read more Dickens, and then keep a notebook handy. And I'm going to read a lot more Chesterton!

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesterton writes of Dickens that he "did not stamp these places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places." And similarly, this study of Dickens is stamped with the mind of Chesterton. Each of the chapters, "The Dickens Period, "The Boyhood of Dickens," etc., is also an essay expressing Chesterton's thoughts about life and literature. Dickens, we read, was in no way a realist, but rather exaggerated intriguing qualities of people through outlandish characters. And it is the early Dickens who did this best, giving these impossible characters full freedom. In the later Dickens, a desire to be a distinguished novelist hampered his free-wheeling, farcical characterizations. Therefore "All lovers of Dickens," according to Chesterton, "love his early works best."

This also happens to be an early work of Chesterton, and is full of his characteristic ebullience and wisdom - a must for all lovers of this writer.

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always with G.K. Chesterton's "biographies" if you don't already know a fair amount about the subject then you'll be lost. Luckily I did know a good amount about Dickens' life already. I was interested in Chesterton's take on the life as reflected in the books and this book did an excellent job for that. I did skip a few bits where books I haven't read yet came up. Avoiding spoilers even in such old books ...

Upon rereading, now that I've read all of Dickens, I find that the main problem is I can't keep up with all the minor characters whose names Chesterton flings about with such great abandon. The answer is clear. I need to reread a lot of Dickens. (Woohoo!)

[Pete daPixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have paid, once again, for my bad habit of pulling books out of the library shelf without fully investigating their contents. G.K. Chesterton's 'Charles Dickens' is a literary biography and therefore provides scant details of the authors life.
As I never seem to abandon books, I have with perseverance ploughed through the intellectual gymnastics of Mr Chesterton, but, alas, ended up none the wiser.

[Ayu Palar · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is obvious how Chesterton adores Dickens. Even though it's not as critical as, let's say, Orwell's essay, Charles Dickens is a deeper journey to the great author's life and works. Also, it's an amazing demonstration of Chesterton's wit.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesterton's Dickens and Swift's Drapier's Letters


It's sometimes interesting to consider books in tandem, even if the overlap between them is merely tangential. This is the only reference to Swift in Chesterton's remarkable study of Dickens (you'll have to wait for it a little, since what precedes it is crusial to Chesterton's argument and mine--nicely expressed too, which is always a bonus):

The optimist is a better reformer than the pessimist; and the man who
believes life to be excellent is the man who alters it most. It seems a
paradox, yet the reason of it is very plain. The pessimist can be enraged
at evil. But only the optimist can be surprised at it. But only the optimist
can be surprised at it. From the reformer is required a simplicity of
surprise. He must have the faculty of a violent and virgin astonishment.
It is not enough that he should think injustice distressing; he must
think injustice absurd, an anomaly in existence, a matter less for tears
than for a shattering laughter. On the other hand, the pessimists at the
end of the century could hardly curse even the blackest thing; for they
could hardly see it against its black and eternal background. Nothing
was bad, because everything was bad. Life in prison was infamous--
like life anywhere else. The fires of persecution were vile--like the stars.
We perpetually find this paradox of a contented discontent. Dr. Johnson
takes too sad a view of humanity, but he is also too satisfied a Conservative.
Rousseau takes too rosy a view of humanity, but he causes a revolution.
Swift is angry, but a Tory. Shelley is happy, and a rebel. Dickens, the
optimist, satirizes the Fleet, and the Fleet is gone. Gissing, the pessimist,
satirizes Suburbia, and Suburbia remains.

On Swift, Chesterton was, regrettably, a little tone deaf. There's an absurdity in the characterization of Swift here that Chesterton would have been the first to laugh at if it had been pointed out to him. Anger is a passing mood, even in people who are considerably disposed to it; people are never angry in the same sense as they have fingers and toes. Certainly if they lost their fingers and toes as they lose their tempers, they'd be hard pressed to make up the deficiency. But only on the most superficial reading is anyone likely to find Swift unusually disposed to anger. No single passage out of Swift gives anything like his full emotional range--this passage for instance (concluding the 'Letter to Lord Chancellor MIddleton' from The Drapier's Letters) has relatively little of his characteristic humour:


I sent these papers to an eminent lawyer (and yet a man of virtue and
learning into the bargain) who, after many alterations returned them
back, with assuring me, that they are perfectly innocent; without the
least mixture of treason, rebellion, sedition, malice, disaffection,
reflection, or wicked insinuation whatsoever.

If the bellman of each parish, as he goes his circuit, would cry out,
every night, "Past twelve o'clock; Beware of Wood's halfpence;" it would
probably cut off the occasion for publishing any more pamphlets;
provided that in country towns it were done upon market days. For my
own part, as soon as it shall be determined, that it is not against law,
I will begin the experiment in the liberty of St. Patrick's; and hope my
example may be followed in the whole city But if authority shall think
fit to forbid all writings, or discourses upon this subject, except such
as are in favour of Mr. Wood, I will obey as it becomes me; only when I
am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds, not any
reflection upon the wisdom of my countrymen; but only these few words,
BEWARE OF WOOD'S HALFPENCE

But this passage is not at all untypical of Swift's mood, especially when he wrote to persuade: direct, with a persistent lilt, the words lightly outlined by a shimmer of sadness. Of acourse there's rage prodding beneath the antic humour in much of his writing, but it's worth bearing in mind he had to watch the daily spectacle of the nation where he passed most of his life being brutalized and starved deliberately, with calculation, the upper crust of that nation (who mostly resided abroad) collaborating in that oppressive effort. Sure it would try your patience.

As for Swift being Tory, he switched allegiance from the Whigs early in his life for two principal reasons: he was a devout minister and at least the avant garde of the Whigs were openly atheistic; and the Whigs were a party devoted to war. He was uneasy identifying with any party, and certainly enraged Tories as much as he did Whigs, and for the same reason: neither party at its core was either thoughtful or humane, and he was more than happy to rag at them both continuously over that. He certainly always aimed at changing the status quo ante, and if the wider reforms he sought persistently remained illusive, some of the finest passagaes in Chesterton's Charles Dickens show precisely how partial Dickens' success as a reformer was as wellj, meaning how much is left to us still to do. While Swift is certainly not alone in the concerns he championed, and would never for a moment have claimed he was, it's notable how many of the reforms that have been shakily established over the centuries, and how many we still hope (many of us) to establish, read as if they were cribbed from Swift's Irish and English Tracts. And Swift did lead one successful small revolution at least, whose record has come down to us in The Drapier's Letters (quoted above): the campaign against the imposition from England upon Ireland of William Wood's halfpence and farthings. Either Swift was an exception to Chesterton's astute prescription for (partially) successful reformers, or Swift was far from permanently encased in a carapace of rage, and whatever his temporal dissatisfactions, had made his own peace with life as it's normally lived.

I think it would be more true to say that Chesterton's an exception, the sole one I know of in fact, to the general rule that Swift's most savage critics tend to see, and faithfully describe in their monstrous characterizations of him, not Swift but what he showes them in the sort of glass he typically employs. Not really an exception either, since Chesterton's far from savage in his criticism of Swift, only profoundly mistaken, and he never attempted a full length study or even an article on Swift, and may have read, and innocently absorbed, more of others' corrupt judgments of Swift than of Swift himself.

But if the impulse to reform is always born of embattled love for the world just as it is, humanity even as we find it, what then? Does Swift's impassioned medley of hilarity, invective, irony rough and smooth, eloquence sharp and gentle, the steadfast gaze of his fierce mild eyes amount to an ignorant denunciation we can safeably shrug aside or an urgent warning we ignore at our peril? Are humanity's many defenders really protecting us from Swift's unwarranted abuse, or encouraging us to prefer any shipwreck no matter how absolute, rather than the slightest rebuke to our self-esteem?

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is less a biography and more a literature review. Of course, because it was written by G.K. Chesterton it was delightfully funny even when I didn't recognize various people he referred to from Dickens' books. Chesterton pretty clearly lays out Dickens literary importance and also is honest about his faults. I copied down many zingers as well as thought provoking passages. Just a few of my favorites:

"The realist for a time prevailed. But realists did not enjoy their victory (if they enjoyed anything) very long."

"We are not of, of course, concerned with the kind of people who say that they wish that Dickens was more refined. If those people are ever refined, it will be with fire."

"All criticism tends too much to become criticism of criticism; and the reason is very evident. It is that criticism of creation is so very staggering anything. We see this in the difficulty of criticizing any artistic creation. We see it again in the difficulty of criticizing that creation which is spelt with a capital C. The Pessimists who attack the universe are always under this disadvantage. They have an exhilarating consciousness that they could make the sun and moon better; but they also have the depressing consciousness that they could not make the sun and moon at all. A man looking a t a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such a mistake."

"Perhaps we could have created Mr. Guppy; but the effort would certainly have exhausted us; we should be ever afterwards wheeled about in a bath chair at Bournemouth."

"There is no way of dealing properly with the ultimate greatness of Dickens, except by offering sacrifice to him as a god; and this is opposed to the etiquette of our time."

"The hardest thing to remember about our own time, of course, is simply that it is a time: we all instinctively think of it as the Day of Judgement."

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a lover of Dickens, though this is not because I haven't tried. I have, and have failed, and continue to try periodically, because it's *Dickens* and therefore the problem must be me, and hopefully I'll eventually grow out of it. And so I was delighted to find out that Chesterton had written a book on Dickens. It's part biography, part literary analysis, and part pure Chestertonian flair. I don't have the knowledge to have any firm idea of whether or not Chesterton's take is particularly valid or helpful, but he makes me want to pick up the Pickwick Papers and give Dickens another try. So I'm calling the book a delightful success.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography of Charles Dickens! I read it with my friend Jamie and we had many great discussions!

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I already had my Chesterton out, I decided to knock out another biography. In this case I chose Charles Dickens. I have read a few Dickens novels previously, all as reading assignments in high school: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol. But about the author himself, I knew little. The most common Dickens fact passed around by English teachers though seems to be that, Dickens got paid by the word (used to explain his long wandering sentences and large words). Probably true? But I have yet to read a source backing that up (Chesterton doesn't confirm it).

Chesterton, writing in 1903 thirty-three years after Dickens' death, made a prediction about Dickens: Dickens will dominate the whole England of the nineteenth century; he will be left on that platform alone. And from a 2019 perspective, it seems to have come true. Other authors he mentions, Thackeray and Swinburne, aren't assigned as high school reading assignments. Everyone knows Scrooge, and has at least heard the name of Oliver Twist, but no characters from Macaulay. Dickens is easily recognized as a great author. But even at the turn of the 19th century, Chesterton's contemporaries seemed to already be mourning the end of the greats: Why have we no great men? Chesterton's diagnosis is: We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious, that is, we are small.

Reading this biography of Dickens is less of biographical details and more an explication of each of Dickens' works, from Pickwick to Edwin Drood. Chesterton has an amazing grasp of Dickens, pulling out names of minor characters in every book Dickens ever wrote. I am assuming it would be difficult to keep up unless you read every single book by Dickens first. Chesterton explains his method of biography:

I have deliberately in this book mentioned only such facts in the life of Dickens as were, I will not say significant (for all facts must be significant, including the million facts that can never be mentioned by anybody), but such facts as illustrated my own immediate meaning. I have observed this method consistently without shame because I think that we can hardly make too evident a chasm between books which profess to be statements of all the ascertainable facts, and books which (like this one) profess only to contain a particular opinion or a summary deducible from the facts. Books like Forster's exhaustive work and others exist, and are as accessible as St. Paul's Cathedral; we have them in common as we have the facts of the physical universe; and it seems highly desirable that the function of making an exhaustive catalogue and that of making an individual generalisation should not be confused. No catalogue, of course, can contain all the facts even of five minutes; every catalogue, however long and learned, must be not only a bold, but, one may say, an audacious selection. But if a great many facts are given, the reader gains a blurred belief that all the facts are being given. In a professedly personal judgment it is therefore clearer and more honest to give only a few illustrative facts, learning the other obtainable facts to balance them. For thus it is made quite clear that the thing is a sketch, an affair of a few lines.

Style

And Chesterton does a great job at making Dickens his own, interpreting him as part of a larger Christian worldview. First, Dickens didn't make a literature; he made a mythology. Chesterton remarks that Dickens' characters are timeless. His characters are more important than his plots, and they don't change throughout the book (but doesn't Scrooge really change? Maybe not?). Pickwick embodies loveable tomfoolery and romance like Aphrodite embodies love.

Similar to Robert Browning, Dickens is used by Chesterton as a champion of democracy-- representing all voices, the common man. It is the custom of our little epoch to sneer at the middle classes. Cockney artists profess to find the bourgeoisie dull, as if artists had any business to find anything dull. Decadents talk contemptuously of its conventions and its set tasks; it never occurs to them that conventions and set tasks are the very way to keep the greenness in the grass and that redness in the roses-- which they have lost for ever. Dickens takes the ordinary and everyday and makes them into heroes. You don't have to be a princess. You don't even have to be that talented. You can have idiosyncrasies and flaws. You can even be a fool and be a hero: Pickwick goes through life with that god-like gullibility which is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets most out of life... His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough to be made a fool of.

Optimism and Reform

Chesterton also paints Dickens as an optimist. How is he an optimist? In the way he portrays his characters: the poor are made great. The weak things are made strong. But optimism doesn't mean indifference, or acceptance. Dickens used his literature to spark change, and I think reformers could perhaps learn a few things from Dicken's approach. Chesterton sets Dickens next to Rousseau, the philosopher who asserted than man is inherently good: There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. The spirit of the early century produced great men, because it believed that men were great. It made strong men by encouraging weak men. This is the spirit that inhabits Dickens' works.

And it was this spirit that got things done. When Dickens' took aim at an issue of the day in a book, the public took notice and things changed. Workhouses, debtors' prison-- all were reformed because Dickens wrote about them:

He gave every one an interest in Mr. Bumble's existence; and by the same act gave every one an interest in his destruction. It would be difficult to find a stronger instance of the utility and energy of the method which we have, for the sake of argument, called the method of the optimistic reformer. As long as the low Yorkshire schools were entirely colourless and dreary, they continued quietly tolerated by the public and quietly intolerable to the victims. So long as Squeers was dull as well as cruel he was permitted; the moment he became amusing as well as cruel he was destroyed...

As long as Bumble was merely inhuman he was allowed. When he became human humanity wiped him right out. For in order to do these great acts of justice we must always realise not only the humanity of the oppressed, but even the humanity of the opporessor. The satirist had, in a sense, to create the images in the mind before, as an iconoclast, he could destroy them. Dickens had to make Squeers live before he could make him die.

I would add that John Oliver perhaps has learned this lesson? John Oliver's Last Week Tonight has also been able to bring issues to light that would likely go unnoticed. He can make "boring" topics, like prison reform and mobile home parks and loan sharks, all come alive. Different genre, but simimlar approach.

The closing words of Chesterton on Dickens are poignant, and reminded me of similar sentiments from C. S. Lewis on the eternal significance of each person around you:

If we are to look for lessons, here at least is the last and deepest lesson of Dickens. It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and prodigies. This is the truth, not merely of the fixed figures of our life; the wife, the husband, the fool that fills the sky. It is true of the whole stream and substance of our daily experience; every instant we reject a great fool merely because he is foolish. Every day we neglect Tootses and Swivellers, Guppys and Joblings, Simmerys and Flashers. Every day we lose the last sight of some Jobling and Chuckster, the Analytical Chemist, or the Marchioness. Every day we are missing a monster whom we might easily love, and an imbecile whom we should certainly admire.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much Chesterton and not enough Dickens.

I have long been a fan of Dickens and recently somewhat of a fan of Chesterton as well, so I was excited to see one author's treatment of the other. The book is a literary biography and does not deal with Dickens's life in depth, which would not be a problem if Chesterton would stick to Dickens's work. But the book reads much like Chesterton's other polemical writings, only he references Dickens's works as support for his arguments. Not a bad read, but not a very detached critical analysis.

I also found Chesterton's selection a bit suspect. The books garnering the greatest attention are Pickwick and Martin Chuzzlewit of all things. And G.K. spent more time on the short Christmas story "Chimes" than he did on "A Tale of Two Cities," "Great Expectations," and "Hard Times" combined.

This one is only for serious fans of both Dickens and Chesterton.

[Bryana Beaird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chesterton on Dickens? It hardly gets better than that. Chesterton is the perfect man to write about Dickens, because he understood and shared so many of Dickens’ central ideas: Love of the free and simple man’s home. A fierce defense of the traditional family structure. A thorough understanding of Romance. A humble and unpretentious regard for the poor. A respect for the great Christian carelessness that seeks its meat from God. A relish for comradeship and serious joy. A hunger for the inn at the end of the world. Indeed, I feel this is one of Chesterton’s best books, and found fuller explanations in here for many of the themes that pervade his poetry. Dickens was exactly the stuff that Chesterton understood best, and Chesterton understood even Dickens’ literary weaknesses better than any other critic I’ve encountered. Ultimately, it is plain that Chesterton transcended the mighty Dickens because he did more than delight in the ideals: Chesterton actually lived by them.

[Richard Epstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesterton is one of the most annoying writers ever, mostly because of his habit of mechanical paradox (he'd have written, "Chesterton is one of the most annoying authors ever, which makes him one of the least annoying authors ever"). He prefers the early novels like Nicholas Nickleby to Great Expectations and Bleak House because the comic character are more outrageous and Dickens isn't wasting his energy on things like plot. Despite all this, and the many King Charles's heads which plague Chesterton (and his readers), things like the Middle Ages and the Roman Catholic Church and booze, which seem to show up at inopportune moments, like lunch with the rabbi's wife and parent-teacher conferences, this is one of the best books about Dickens I know. I like the Schocken edition because it includes an introductory essay by Steven Marcus.

[D.L. Beddoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers definitely have to know Dickens’ works well—and even English Lit well— (and probably Chesterton…)to appreciate the brilliance of Chesterton’s observations. For a reader with a degree in English Literature (heavy on the Victorian era), who also has read a great deal of Dickens, this book is a treasure. But even I had to stop and read or reread a few Dickens novels (and rewatch a few movie adaptations) before continuing my read of this book. Love Chesterton’s dry wit and love both his “criticism” and defense of Dickens. Loved learning from a teeny bit of research that this book (specifically chapter 4) led to much of Dickens’ subsequent revival of popularity (see Dale Alquist Common Sense 101: Lessons from GK Chesterton).

[João Torres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard is to define Chesterton. He is brilliant, but he seems to be happy with dealing with works that are simple and far from masterpieces. His writing is bordeline perfect, he is a master of sentence construction. In this book he construction a number of memorable quotes. He is too perceptive but he does not seems to want to be the ultimate writer.
This biography is a great reading, does not matter what you feel reading Dickens, what matter is how you feel when someone build a past writer as Dickens with the annoying assumption he must adhere to any school of criticism or label.

[Lucas Esandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It made me love Dickens even though I had only read a
couple of his books. There are several quotes that are remarkable.
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey with GKC. You could listen or read him lecture about elephants or umbrellas and you’ll be delighted nonetheless. In case you wonder, that’s what he did once.
When I read him I feel the miraculous and amazing joy of being alive. A source of youth and gratitude every time I read him. Must read.

[Aneece · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned of this book in essays on Dickens by Edmund Wilson and T. S. Eliot. Was reminded of G. K. Chesterton by Hannah Arendt in Origins of Totalitarianism. Was re-reminded of Chesterton when two characters quote him in I Capture the Castle. I love that my books keep track of each other for me. It's as if they gossip on the shelves when the room's empty.