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Selected Journalism, 1850-1870
A testament to the energy and creativity of a writer and journalist without equal
Throughout his writing career Charles Dickens was a hugely prolific journalist. This volume of his later work is selected from pieces that he wrote after he founded the journal Household Words in 1850, up until his death in 1870. Here subjects as varied as his nocturnal walks around London slums, prisons, theatres and Inns of Court, journeys to the continent and his childhood in Kent and London are captured in remarkable pieces such as 'Night Walks', 'On Strike', 'New Year's Day' and 'Lying Awake'. Aiming to catch the imagination of a public besieged by hack journalism, these writings are an extraordinary blend of public and private, news and recollection, reality and fantastic description. David Pascoe's introduction traces the development of Dickens's career as a journalist and examines his fusion of real events with flights of fancy. This edition also includes explanatory notes, a bibliography and a Dickens chronology.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Throughout his writing career Charles Dickens was a hugely prolific journalist. This volume of his later work is selected from pieces that he wrote after he founded the journal Household Words in 1850, up until his death in 1870. Here subjects as varied as his nocturnal walks around London slums, prisons, theatres and Inns of Court, journeys to the continent and his childhood in Kent and London are captured in remarkable pieces such as 'Night Walks', 'On Strike', 'New Year's Day' and 'Lying Awake'. Aiming to catch the imagination of a public besieged by hack journalism, these writings are an extraordinary blend of public and private, news and recollection, reality and fantastic description. David Pascoe's introduction traces the development of Dickens's career as a journalist and examines his fusion of real events with flights of fancy. This edition also includes explanatory notes, a bibliography and a Dickens chronology.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
648 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1998
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About the author
Charles Dickens
12.6k books31.3k followersCharles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
(from Wikipedia)
Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
(from Wikipedia)
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January 16, 2022Dickens is such a difficult writer for a modern reader to place. This collection of essays spans much of Victorian society, from law courts and workhouses to music halls, seances and the races. Few writers of that period dwelt so much on poverty as he did and his account of people sleeping rough outside full workhouses is profoundly angry: "it is now the first duty of The People to be resolutely blind and deaf; firmly insisting, above all things, on their and their children’s right to every means of life and health that Providence has afforded for all, and firmly refusing to allow their name to be taken in vain for any purpose, by any party, until their homes are purified and the amplest means of cleanliness and decency are secured to them."
Equally though, much of the writing here is markedly conservative. For example, when it comes to strikes, he writes that "They are, sometimes, not workmen at all, but designing persons, who have, for their own base purposes, immeshed the workmen in a system of tyranny and oppression. Through these, on the one hand, and through an imperfect or misguided view of the details of a case on the other, a strike (always supposing this great power in the strikers) may be easily set a going." As with the circumlocution office in Little Dorritt, much of the collection dwells on the red tape that inhibits enterprise, such as the difficult of registering a patent; "Your Red Tapist is everywhere. He is always at hand, with a coil of Red Tape, prepared to make a small official parcel of the largest subject. In the reception-room of a Government Office, he will wind Red Tape round and round the sternest deputation that the country can send to him. In either House of Parliament, he will pull more Red Tape out of his mouth, at a moment’s notice, than a conjuror at a Fair."
Probably the most unpalatable piece of writing from a modern perspective is his account of how indigenous peoples from the Empire could be exhibited like animals in a zoo: "My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid.... it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will regret his disappearance, in the course of this world’s development, from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief." Notionally, we think of someone like Trollope as a much conservative writer than Dickens but I hardly think Trollope could have written something like this: "several of these scenes of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and understood at Cork."
Equally though, much of the writing here is markedly conservative. For example, when it comes to strikes, he writes that "They are, sometimes, not workmen at all, but designing persons, who have, for their own base purposes, immeshed the workmen in a system of tyranny and oppression. Through these, on the one hand, and through an imperfect or misguided view of the details of a case on the other, a strike (always supposing this great power in the strikers) may be easily set a going." As with the circumlocution office in Little Dorritt, much of the collection dwells on the red tape that inhibits enterprise, such as the difficult of registering a patent; "Your Red Tapist is everywhere. He is always at hand, with a coil of Red Tape, prepared to make a small official parcel of the largest subject. In the reception-room of a Government Office, he will wind Red Tape round and round the sternest deputation that the country can send to him. In either House of Parliament, he will pull more Red Tape out of his mouth, at a moment’s notice, than a conjuror at a Fair."
Probably the most unpalatable piece of writing from a modern perspective is his account of how indigenous peoples from the Empire could be exhibited like animals in a zoo: "My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid.... it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will regret his disappearance, in the course of this world’s development, from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief." Notionally, we think of someone like Trollope as a much conservative writer than Dickens but I hardly think Trollope could have written something like this: "several of these scenes of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and understood at Cork."
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April 4, 2022I have this rule about finishing books that I start. Mostly, I think this is a good rule, I often find that difficult books can get more enjoyable as you work through them and even in bad books there is usually some value in figuring out what's bad about them. Every so often it does end up becoming a miserable exercise in intellectual masochism.
February 22, 2009
wonderful glimpses here into Dickens' life and the times, no doubt. this text is much better handled in small doses.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews