Editing Charles Dickens (section)

==Literary style==
[[File:The Night.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|"The Night" scene in ''Bleak House'', depicting a murky [[Westminster Bridge]] in London. Dickens set the Gothic novel in an urban environment.]]
Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various things, including the [[picaresque novel]] tradition,<ref name=Levin1970p676>{{harvnb|Levin|1970|p=676}}</ref> [[melodrama]]<ref name=Levin1970p674>{{harvnb|Levin|1970|p=674}}</ref> and the [[novel of sensibility]].<ref name=Purton2012pxvii>{{harvnb|Purton|2012|p=xvii}}</ref> According to Ackroyd, other than these, perhaps the most important literary influence on him was derived from the fables of ''[[The Arabian Nights]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=44–45}}.</ref> Satire and [[irony]] are central to the picaresque novel.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/picaresque-novel |title=Picaresque novel |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica |last=Luebering |first=J E |access-date=5 March 2019}}</ref> Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel tradition of [[Laurence Sterne]], [[Henry Fielding]] and [[Tobias Smollett]]. Fielding's ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]'' was a major influence on the 19th-century novelist including Dickens, who read it in his youth<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=44}}</ref> and named a son [[Henry Fielding Dickens]] after him.<ref name=HFDickens1934pxviii>{{harvnb|Dickens|1934|p=xviii}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25851/25851-h/25851-h.htm#Page_2_462 |last=Forster |first=John |title=The Life of Charles Dickens |publisher=Project Gutenberg |orig-year=1875 |year=2008 |access-date=5 March 2019 |volume=III |chapter=Chapter 20 |page=462 |archive-date=15 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190715080715/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25851/25851-h/25851-h.htm#Page_2_462 |url-status=live}}</ref> Influenced by [[Gothic fiction]]—a literary genre that began with ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]'' (1764) by [[Horace Walpole]]—Dickens incorporated Gothic imagery, settings and plot devices in his works.<ref>{{cite news |title=Charles Dickens and the Gothic (2.11) – The Cambridge History of the Gothic |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-the-gothic/charles-dickens-and-the-gothic/FEC5D30D7DA0B6B136356034F9EEF7A0 |access-date=18 July 2021 |agency=Cambridge University Press |archive-date=18 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210718093940/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-the-gothic/charles-dickens-and-the-gothic/FEC5D30D7DA0B6B136356034F9EEF7A0 |url-status=live}}</ref> Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary urban environments: in particular London, such as Dickens's ''Oliver Twist'' and ''Bleak House''. The jilted bride [[Miss Havisham]] from ''Great Expectations'' is one of Dickens's best-known gothic creations; living in a ruined mansion, her bridal gown effectively doubles as her funeral shroud.<ref>{{cite news |title=Charles Dickens, Victorian Gothic and Bleak House |url=https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/charles-dickens-victorian-gothic-and-bleak-house |access-date=18 July 2021 |agency=British Library |archive-date=27 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727035856/https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/charles-dickens-victorian-gothic-and-bleak-house |url-status=live}}</ref>

No other writer had such a profound influence on Dickens as [[William Shakespeare]]. On Dickens's veneration of Shakespeare, [[Alfred Harbage]] wrote in ''A Kind of Power: The Shakespeare-Dickens Analogy'' (1975) that "No one is better qualified to recognise literary genius than a literary genius".<ref name="Schlicke"/> Regarding Shakespeare as "the great master" whose [[Shakespeare's plays|plays]] "were an unspeakable source of delight", Dickens's lifelong affinity with the playwright included seeing theatrical productions of his plays in London and putting on amateur dramatics with friends in his early years.<ref name="Schlicke">{{cite book |last=Schlicke |first=Paul |title=The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens: Anniversary Edition |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2011 |page=537}}</ref> In 1838, Dickens travelled to [[Stratford-upon-Avon]] and visited the house in which Shakespeare was born, leaving his autograph in the visitors' book. Dickens would draw on this experience in his next work, ''Nicholas Nickleby'' (1838–39), expressing the strength of feeling experienced by visitors to Shakespeare's birthplace: the character [[Nicholas Nickleby#Around London|Mrs Wititterly]] states, "I don't know how it is, but after you've seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one."<ref>{{cite news |title=Dickens and Shakespeare |url=https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/arts/literature/dickens-shakespeare/ |access-date=1 September 2020 |agency=University of Warwick |archive-date=13 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200813105534/https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/knowledgecentre/arts/literature/dickens-shakespeare |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:clarke-dodger.jpg|thumb|upright|left|The [[Artful Dodger]] from ''Oliver Twist''. His dialect is rooted in [[Cockney English]].]]

Dickens's writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity.<ref name="Mee2010">{{harvnb|Mee|2010|p=20}}.</ref> Satire, flourishing in his gift for caricature, is his forte. An early reviewer compared him to the artist and social critic [[William Hogarth|Hogarth]] for his keen practical sense of the ludicrous side of life, though his acclaimed mastery of varieties of class idiom may in fact mirror the conventions of contemporary popular theatre.<ref>{{harvnb|Vlock|1998|p=30}}.</ref> Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an "allegorical impetus" to the novels' meanings.<ref name="Mee2010"/> To cite one of numerous examples, the name Mr Murdstone in ''David Copperfield'' conjures up twin allusions to murder and stony coldness.<ref>{{harvnb|Stone|1987|pp=xx–xxi}}.</ref> His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and [[Realism (arts)|realism]]. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of fancy. On his ability to elicit a response from his works, English screenwriter [[Sarah Phelps]] writes, "He knew how to work an audience and how to get them laughing their heads off one minute or on the edge of their seats and holding their breath the next. The other thing about Dickens is that he loved telling stories and he loved his characters, even those horrible, mean-spirited ones."<ref>{{cite news |title=Why Charles Dickens' novels make great TV |url=https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/dec/22/charles-dickens-novels-tv |access-date=16 January 2024 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>

The author worked closely with his illustrators, supplying them with a summary of the work at the outset and thus ensuring that his characters and settings were exactly how he envisioned them. He briefed the illustrator on plans for each month's instalment so that work could begin before he wrote them. [[Marcus Stone]], illustrator of ''Our Mutual Friend'', recalled that the author was always "ready to describe down to the minutest details the personal characteristics, and&nbsp;... life-history of the creations of his fancy".<ref>{{harvnb|Cohen|1980|p=206}}.</ref> Dickens employs [[Cockney English]] in many of his works, denoting working-class Londoners. Cockney grammar appears in terms such as [[ain't]], and consonants in words are frequently omitted, as in 'ere (here) and wot (what).<ref>{{cite news |title=London dialect in Dickens |url=https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126779.html |access-date=19 May 2020 |publisher=British Library |archive-date=9 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200609021116/http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126779.html |url-status=live}}</ref> An example of this usage is in ''Oliver Twist''. The Artful Dodger uses cockney slang which is juxtaposed with Oliver's 'proper' English, when the Dodger repeats Oliver saying "seven" with "sivin".<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/etext-project/charles_dickens/olivr10/chapter43.html |author=Charles Dickens |title=Oliver Twist |quote=Project Gutenberg |publisher=Nalanda Digital Library |chapter=XLIII |access-date=20 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322131244/http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/etext-project/charles_dickens/olivr10/chapter43.html |archive-date=22 March 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Characters===
[[File:Dickens dream.jpg|thumb|''Dickens's Dream'' by [[Robert William Buss]], portraying Dickens at his desk at [[Gads Hill Place]] surrounded by many of his characters]]
Dickens's biographer [[Claire Tomalin]] regards him as the greatest creator of character in English fiction after [[Shakespeare]].<ref>{{harvnb|Jones|2012}}.</ref>
Dickensian [[List of Dickensian characters|characters]] are amongst the most memorable in English literature, especially so because of their typically whimsical names. The likes of [[Ebenezer Scrooge]], [[Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol)|Tiny Tim]], [[Jacob Marley]] and [[Bob Cratchit]] (''A Christmas Carol''); [[Oliver Twist (character)|Oliver Twist]], [[Artful Dodger|The Artful Dodger]], [[Fagin]] and [[Bill Sikes]] (''Oliver Twist''); [[Pip (Great Expectations)|Pip]], [[Miss Havisham]], [[Estella (Great Expectations)|Estella]] and [[Abel Magwitch]] (''Great Expectations''); [[Sydney Carton]], [[Charles Darnay]] and [[Madame Defarge]] (''A Tale of Two Cities''); [[David Copperfield (character)|David Copperfield]], [[Uriah Heep (character)|Uriah Heep]] and [[Wilkins Micawber|Mr Micawber]] (''David Copperfield''); [[Quilp|Daniel Quilp]] and [[Nell Trent]] (''The Old Curiosity Shop''), [[Samuel Pickwick]] and [[Sam Weller (character)|Sam Weller]] (''The Pickwick Papers''); and [[Wackford Squeers]] (''Nicholas Nickleby'') are so well known as to be part and parcel of popular culture, and in some cases have passed into ordinary language: a ''scrooge'', for example, is a miser or someone who dislikes Christmas festivity.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Scrooge,-Ebenezer |title=Scrooge, Ebenezer – definition of Scrooge, Ebenezer in English |dictionary=Oxford English Dictionary |access-date=16 October 2018 |archive-date=22 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131022164358/http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Scrooge,-Ebenezer |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:P 060--In Dickens London.jpg|thumb|left|Illustration of [[London Bridge]] (from the 1914 book ''In Dickens's London'') which [[Nancy (Oliver Twist)|Nancy]] crossed in ''Oliver Twist'']]
His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. "Gamp" became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character [[Sarah Gamp|Mrs Gamp]], and "Pickwickian", "Pecksniffian" and "Gradgrind" all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were, respectively, [[Quixotism|quixotic]], hypocritical and vapidly factual. The character that made Dickens famous, Sam Weller became known for his [[Wellerism]]s—one-liners that turn [[proverb]]s on their heads.<ref name="Paris Review"/> Many were drawn from real life: Mrs Nickleby is based on his mother, although she did not recognise herself in the portrait,<ref>{{harvnb|Ziegler|2007|p=45}}.</ref> just as Mr Micawber is constructed from aspects of his father's 'rhetorical exuberance';<ref>{{harvnb|Hawes|1998|p=153}}.</ref> Harold Skimpole in ''Bleak House'' is based on [[James Henry Leigh Hunt]]; his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in ''David Copperfield''.<ref>{{harvnb|Ziegler|2007|p=46}}.</ref> Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with [[Hans Christian Andersen]] informed the delineation of Uriah Heep (a term synonymous with [[sycophant]]).<ref>{{harvnb|Hawes|1998|p=109}}.</ref>

[[Virginia Woolf]] maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks".<ref>{{harvnb|Woolf|1986|p=286}}.</ref> [[T. S. Eliot]] wrote that Dickens "excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings".<ref>{{cite news |title=The best Charles Dickens characters |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/9033356/The-best-Charles-Dickens-characters.html |access-date=7 September 2019 |work=The Telegraph |archive-date=14 October 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191014111433/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/9033356/The-best-Charles-Dickens-characters.html |url-status=live}}</ref> One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself.<ref>{{cite news |last=Jones |first=Bryony |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/europe/uk-dickensian-london/ |title=A tale of one city: Dickensian London |publisher=[[CNN]] |date=13 February 2012 |access-date=21 August 2014 |ref=none |archive-date=21 August 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140821191251/http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/europe/uk-dickensian-london/ |url-status=live}}</ref> Dickens described London as a [[magic lantern]], inspiring the places and people in many of his novels.<ref name="DickensLondon"/> From the [[coaching inn]]s on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the [[River Thames|Thames]], all aspects of the capital—[[Dickens' London|Dickens's London]]—are described over the course of his body of work.<ref name="DickensLondon">{{cite book |title=Dickens's London: Perception, Subjectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=poidiU20hz4C&pg=PA209 |year=2012 |first=Julian |last=Wolfreys |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-4040-9 |page=209}}</ref> Walking the streets (particularly around London) formed an integral part of his writing life, stoking his creativity. Dickens was known to regularly walk at least a dozen miles (19&nbsp;km) per day, and once wrote, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish."<ref>{{cite news |title=Steve Jobs was right about walking |url=https://financialpost.com/executive/c-suite/steve-jobs-was-right-about-walking |access-date=1 July 2021 |work=Financial Post |archive-date=9 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709181915/https://financialpost.com/executive/c-suite/steve-jobs-was-right-about-walking |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Autobiographical elements===
[[File:David Copperfield, We are disturbed in our cookery.jpg|thumb|right|230px|An original illustration by [[Phiz]] from the novel ''David Copperfield'', which is widely regarded as Dickens's most autobiographical work]]
Authors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people they have known in real life. ''David Copperfield'' is regarded by many as a veiled autobiography of Dickens. The scenes of interminable court cases and legal arguments in ''Bleak House'' reflect Dickens's experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright.<ref>{{harvnb|Polloczek|1999|p=133}}.</ref> Dickens's father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, with the detailed depiction of life in the [[Marshalsea]] prison in ''Little Dorrit'' resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=}}.</ref> Lucy Stroughill, a childhood sweetheart, may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as Little Em'ly in ''David Copperfield'' and Lucie Manette in ''A Tale of Two Cities''.<ref>{{harvnb|Slater|1983|pp=43, 47}}</ref>{{refn|Slater also detects Ellen Ternan in the portrayal of Lucie Manette.|group="nb"}}

Dickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life until six years after his death, when John Forster published a biography on which Dickens had collaborated. Though Skimpole brutally sends up [[Leigh Hunt]], some critics have detected in his portrait features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by self-parody.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=653}}.</ref>

===Episodic writing===
[[File:Publicité pour Great Expectations dans All the Year Round.jpeg|thumb|right|230px|Advertisement for ''Great Expectations'', serialised in the weekly literary magazine ''[[All the Year Round]]'' from December 1860 to August 1861. The advert contains the plot device "to be continued".]]
A pioneer of the [[Serial (literature)|serial]] publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as ''[[Master Humphrey's Clock]]'' and ''[[Household Words]]'', later reprinted in book form.<ref name="Grossman 2012 54"/><ref name="Lodge 2002 118"/> These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than before.<ref name="Howsam">{{cite book |last=Howsam |first=Leslie |title=The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=85 |quote=It inspired a narrative that Dickens would explore and develop throughout his career. The instalments would typically culminate at a point in the plot that created reader anticipation and thus reader demand, generating a plot and sub-plot motif that would come to typify the novel structure.}}</ref> His instalment format inspired a narrative that he would explore and develop throughout his career, and the regular [[cliffhanger]]s made each new episode widely anticipated.<ref name="NewYorker"/><ref name="Howsam"/> When ''[[The Old Curiosity Shop]]'' was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in [[New York Harbor|New York harbour]], shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, "Is little Nell dead?"<ref>{{harvnb|Glancy|1999|p=34}}.</ref> Dickens was able to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end. He wrote, "The thing has to be planned for presentation in these fragments, and yet for afterwards fusing together as an uninterrupted whole."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Axton |first1=William |title="Keystone" Structure in Dickens' Serial Novels |url=https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/utq.37.1.31 |pages=31–50 |journal=University of Toronto Quarterly |volume=37 |issue= 1 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=October 1967|doi=10.3138/utq.37.1.31 }}</ref>

Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers and friends. His friend Forster had a significant hand in reviewing his drafts, an influence that went beyond matters of punctuation; he toned down melodramatic and sensationalist exaggerations, cut long passages (such as the episode of Quilp's drowning in ''The Old Curiosity Shop''), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in ''Oliver Twist''. Dickens had not thought of killing Little Nell and it was Forster who advised him to entertain this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine.<ref>{{harvnb|Davies|1983|pp=166–169}}.</ref> When in 1863 Jewish English reader [[Eliza Davis (letter writer)|Eliza Davis]] wrote to rebuke him for having "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew" with the character of Fagin in ''Oliver Twist'', Dickens halted the second printing of the novel and made some changes to the original 1837 text.<ref>{{cite news |title=Letters "caused rewrite of Fagin" |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4117609.stm |website=BBC |date=22 December 2004 |access-date=18 December 2024}}</ref> He also created a group of sympathetic Jewish characters in his next novel, ''[[Our Mutual Friend]]'', published 1864–1865.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Johnson |first1=Edgar |title=Dickens' Apology for Fagin |url=https://omf.ucsc.edu/dickens/biographical-accounts/apology-for-fagin.html |website=Our Mutual Friend: The Scholarly Pages (UC Santa Cruz) |access-date=18 December 2024}}</ref>

At the helm in popularising cliffhangers and serial publications in Victorian literature,<ref>{{cite news |title=Cliffhangers poised to make Dickens a serial winner again |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/cliffhangers-poised-to-make-dickens-a-serial-winner-again-96jplgjhrp5 |access-date=3 September 2021 |work=[[The Times]] |archive-date=3 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903003603/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cliffhangers-poised-to-make-dickens-a-serial-winner-again-96jplgjhrp5 |url-status=live}}</ref> Dickens's influence can also be seen in television [[soap operas]] and [[film series]], with ''The Guardian'' stating that "the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything."<ref>{{cite news |title=Streaming: the best Dickens adaptations |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/13/streaming-best-dickens-adaptations-film-tv-personal-history-david-copperfield-armando-iannucci |access-date=3 September 2021 |work=The Guardian |archive-date=3 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903003923/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/13/streaming-best-dickens-adaptations-film-tv-personal-history-david-copperfield-armando-iannucci |url-status=live}}</ref> His serialisation of his novels also drew comments from other writers. In Scottish author [[Robert Louis Stevenson]]'s novel ''[[The Wrecker (Stevenson novel)|The Wrecker]]'', Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship, remarked: "See! They were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels."<ref>{{cite book |last=Stevenson |first=Robert Louis |title=The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson: The Wrecker |publisher=Scribner's |date=1895 |page=245}}</ref>

===Social commentary===
[[File:Martin Chuzzlewit illus11.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Nurse [[Sarah Gamp]] (left) from ''Martin Chuzzlewit'' became a stereotype of untrained and incompetent nurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms of [[Florence Nightingale]].]]
Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of [[social commentary]]. [[Simon Callow]] states, "From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it."<ref>{{cite news |title=My hero: Charles Dickens by Simon Callow |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/04/my-hero-charles-dickens-callow |date=12 February 2012 |access-date=7 November 2021 |work=The Guardian |archive-date=7 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211107140015/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/04/my-hero-charles-dickens-callow |url-status=live}}</ref> He was a fierce critic of the poverty and [[social stratification]] of [[Victorian era|Victorian]] society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen".<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=345}}.</ref> Dickens's second novel, ''Oliver Twist'' (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it challenged middle class polemics about criminals, making impossible any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed.<ref>{{harvnb|Raina|1986|p=25}}.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Bodenheimer|2011|p=147}}.</ref> Today, ''Dickensian'' is a term applied to insanitary social conditions or grim institutions akin to those denounced by Dickens in his work, with Oxford professor [[Peter Conrad (academic)|Peter Conrad]] writing, "Dickens, like [[Banksy]], writes blackly prophetic graffiti on the wall."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Conrad |first1=Peter |title='He contains the whole of literature': is Dickens better than Shakespeare? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/02/is-dickens-better-than-shakespeare |access-date=3 March 2025 |work=The Guardian |date=2 March 2025}}</ref>

At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged within society. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues—such as [[sanitation]] and the [[workhouse]]—but his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist, but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this condition is in ''Hard Times'' (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages of the machines they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in ''The Pickwick Papers'' are claimed to have been influential in having the [[Fleet Prison]] shut down. [[Karl Marx]] asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together".<ref name="KucichSadoff">{{harvnb|Kucich|Sadoff|2006|p=155}}.</ref> [[George Bernard Shaw]] even remarked that ''Great Expectations'' was more seditious than Marx's ''[[Das Kapital]]''.<ref name="KucichSadoff"/> The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (''Bleak House'', 1853; ''Little Dorrit'', 1857; ''Our Mutual Friend'', 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored. ''Bleak House'', a satire of  protracted legal cases with ''[[Jarndyce and Jarndyce]]''—a fictional long-running [[Court of Chancery|Chancery]] case which has been cited by courts as a symbol of a legal case that interminably drags on—the central plot of the novel, helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of [[Judicature Acts|legal reform]] in England in the 1870s.<ref>{{cite book |title=Law Reform and Law Making: A Reprint of a Broadcast Talks |author=British Broadcasting Corporation. Third Programme, Charles John Hamson|date=1953 |publisher=W. Heffer |page=16}}</ref>

It has been argued that his technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material' that, in the gradual dénouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the organisation of [[Charles Darwin]]'s ''[[On the Origin of Species]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Atkinson|1990|p=48}}, citing [[Gillian Beer]]'s ''Darwin's Plots'' (1983, p.8).</ref>

===Literary techniques===

Dickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his [[caricature]]s and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in ''The Old Curiosity Shop'' (1841) was received as extremely moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by [[Oscar Wilde]]. "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell", he said in a famous remark, "without dissolving into tears ... of laughter."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/boev1.html |title=Deconstructing Little Nell |last=Boev |first=Hristo |website=The Victorian Web |access-date=11 October 2018 |archive-date=11 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181011133356/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/boev1.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Ellmann|1988|p=441}}: In conversation with [[Ada Leverson]].</ref> [[G. K. Chesterton]] stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this.<ref>{{harvnb|Chesterton|1911|pp=54–55}}.</ref>

[[File:Tiny-tim-dickens.jpg|thumb|upright|Less fortunate characters, such as Tiny Tim (held aloft by Bob Cratchit), are often used by Dickens in sentimental ways.]]
The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the [[sentimental novel]] is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her book ''Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition'', sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "''Dombey and Son'' is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition".<ref>{{cite book |last=Purton |first=Valerie |title=Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition: Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Lamb |series=Anthem nineteenth century studies |location=London |publisher=Anthem Press |year=2012 |pages=xiii, 123 |isbn=978-0857284181}}</ref> The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' online comments that, despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in ''A Christmas Carol'' (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421071/novel |title=novel (literature) |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=7 July 2013 |archive-date=30 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430021713/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421071/novel |url-status=live}}</ref>

In ''Oliver Twist'', Dickens provides readers with an idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically good that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young [[pickpocketing|pickpockets]]. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in ''Bleak House'' and Amy Dorrit in ''Little Dorrit''), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence.<ref>{{harvnb|Marlow|1994|pp=149–150}}.</ref> For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]],'' which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=44}}.</ref>