Editing Charles Dickens (section)

=== Return to England ===
[[File:Portrait of Charles John Huffman Dickens.png|thumb|upright|Dickens's portrait by [[Margaret Gillies]], 1843. Painted during the period when he was writing ''A Christmas Carol'', it was in the [[Royal Academy of Arts]]' 1844 summer exhibition. After viewing it there, [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]] said that it showed Dickens with "the dust and mud of humanity about him, notwithstanding those eagle eyes".<ref name="Brown"/>]]

Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'', written in 1843, which was followed by ''[[The Chimes]]'' in 1844 and ''[[The Cricket on the Hearth]]'' in 1845. Of these, ''A Christmas Carol'' was most popular and, tapping into an old tradition, did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America.<ref>{{harvnb|Callow|2009|pp=146–148}}</ref> The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane [[Ragged School]], caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He later wrote that as the tale unfolded he "wept and laughed, and wept again" as he "walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed".<ref>{{harvnb|Schlicke|1999|p=98}}.</ref>

Between 1843 and 1844, ''[[Martin Chuzzlewit]]'', the last of his [[picaresque novel]]s, was serialised. It includes the character of [[Sarah Gamp]], a nurse who is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk, and also features one of the first literary [[private detective]] characters, Mr Nadgett.<ref>{{cite book |first=LeRoy Lad |last=Panek |title=Before Sherlock Holmes: How Magazines and Newspapers Invented the Detective |page=97 |year=2011 |isbn=9780786488568 |publisher=McFarland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jJ16ZfarZo0C }}</ref> After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work on ''[[Dombey and Son]]'' (1846–48).<ref>{{cite book |first=George |last=Gissing |authorlink=George Gissing |chapter=VII — Dombey and Son |title=The Immortal Dickens |location=London |publisher=Cecil Palmer |date=1925 |chapter-url=http://victorian-studies.net/GG-Dickens.html#DS}}</ref>

At about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother, [[Augustus Dickens|Augustus]], worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out by [[Thomas Powell (1809-1887)|Thomas Powell]], a clerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who had acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Powell was also an author and poet and knew many of the famous writers of the day. After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book called ''The Living Authors of England'' with a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey (''Dombey and Son'') on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to [[Lewis Gaylord Clark]], editor of the New York literary magazine ''[[The Knickerbocker]]'', saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the ''[[New-York Tribune]]'' and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications and Clark was arrested. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted John Chapman & Co to seek written confirmation of Powell's guilt. Dickens did receive a reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but once the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing to the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell out of court.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moss |first1=Sidney P. |last2=Moss |first2=Carolyn J. |title=The Charles Dickens-Thomas Powell Vendetta |date=1996 |publisher=The Whitston Publishing Company |location=Troy New York |pages=42–125}}</ref>

====Philanthropy====
[[File:Dulwich College Charity meeting at the Adelphi Theatre - ILN 1856.jpg|thumb|Dickens presiding over a charity meeting to discuss the future of the [[College of God's Gift]]; from ''[[The Illustrated London News]]'', March 1856]]

[[Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts|Angela Burdett Coutts]], heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up a home for the redemption of [[Fallen woman|fallen women]] of the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named [[Urania Cottage]], in the Lime Grove area of [[Shepherd's Bush]], which he managed for ten years,<ref>{{harvnb|Nayder|2011|p=148}}.</ref> setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=249; 530–538; 549–550; 575}}</ref> Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859.<ref>{{harvnb|Hartley|2009|pp={{Pages needed|date=October 2017}}}}.</ref>

====Religious views====

As a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organised religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titled ''Sunday Under Three Heads'', he defended the people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. "Look into your churches—diminished congregations and scanty attendance. People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven. They display their feeling by staying away [from church]. Turn into the streets [on a Sunday] and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over everything around."<ref name=Callow2012p63>{{harvnb|Callow|2012|p=63}}</ref><ref name=Dickens1836>{{cite web |url=http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dickens/sun_3hea.pdf |last=Dickens |first=Charles |title=Sunday under Three Heads |publisher=Electronics Classics Series |year=2013 |orig-year=1836 |access-date=25 February 2019 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140925203511/http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dickens/sun_3hea.pdf |archive-date=25 September 2014}}</ref>

[[File:Portrait of Charles Dickens (4671094).jpg|thumb|175px|Portrait of Dickens, {{c.}} 1850, [[National Library of Wales]]]]
Dickens honoured the figure of [[Jesus Christ]].<ref>Simon Callow, 'Charles Dickens'. p.159</ref><!-- which Callow book is this? 2009 or 2012? --> He is regarded as a professing Christian.<ref>{{cite book |first=Gary |last=Colledge |year=2012 |title=God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author |page=24 |publisher=Brazos Press |isbn=978-1441247872}}</ref> His son, [[Henry Fielding Dickens]], described him as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early 1840s, he had shown an interest in [[Unitarianism|Unitarian Christianity]] and [[Robert Browning]] remarked that "Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Rost |first=Stephen |title=The Faith Behind the Famous: Charles Dickens |url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-27/faith-behind-famous-charles-dickens.html |magazine=Christianity Today |url-access=subscription |access-date=20 December 2016 |archive-date=31 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161231051244/http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-27/faith-behind-famous-charles-dickens.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Professor Gary Colledge has written that he "never strayed from his attachment to popular lay [[Anglicanism]]".<ref>{{harvnb|Colledge|2009|p=87}}.</ref> Dickens authored a work called ''[[The Life of Our Lord]]'' (1846), a book about the life of Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family.<ref>{{cite web |first=Stephen |last=Skelton |url=https://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/churchandministry/Skelton_Christmas_Carol_A.aspx |title=Reclaiming 'A Christmas Carol' |work=Christian Broadcasting Network |access-date=25 February 2019 |archive-date=15 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190115031402/https://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/churchandministry/Skelton_Christmas_Carol_A.aspx |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chucknorris.com/Christian/Christian/ebooks/dickens_life.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107040114/http://chucknorris.com/Christian/Christian/ebooks/dickens_life.pdf |url-status=dead |title=The Life Of Our Lord |archive-date=7 November 2012}}</ref> In a scene from ''David Copperfield'', Dickens echoed [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s use of [[Sayings of Jesus on the cross#Luke 23:34|Luke 23:34]] from ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' (Dickens held a copy in his library), with [[G. K. Chesterton]] writing, "among the great [[Gospel#Canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John|canonical]] English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common."<ref>{{cite book |last=Besserman |first=Lawrence |title=The Chaucer Review |date=2006 |publisher=Penn State University Press |pages=100–103 |url=https://www.academia.edu/20310557}}</ref>

Dickens disapproved of [[Roman Catholicism]] and 19th-century [[evangelicalism]], seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like [[Spiritualism (movement)|spiritualism]], all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846.<ref name="KSmith">{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Karl |title=Dickens and the Unreal City: Searching for Spiritual Significance in Nineteenth-Century London |date=2008 |publisher=Springer |pages=11–12}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/religion1.html |title=Dickens and Religion: ''The Life of Our Lord'' (1846) |date=June 2011 |publisher=Victorian Web |editor-first=Philip V |editor-last=Allingham |access-date=25 February 2019 |archive-date=15 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190315073824/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/religion1.html |url-status=live}}</ref> While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to the Catholic Church as "that curse upon the world."<ref name="KSmith"/> Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican [[Arthur Penrhyn Stanley]]'s doctrine of "[[Progressive revelation (Christianity)|progressive revelation]]".<ref name="KSmith"/> [[Leo Tolstoy]] and [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer".<ref>{{cite book |editor1-first=Sally |editor1-last=Ledger |editor2-first=Holly |editor2-last=Furneaux |year=2011 |title=Charles Dickens in Context |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=318 |isbn=978-0521887007}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Cedric Thomas |last=Watts |year=1976 |title=The English novel |publisher=Sussex Books |page=55 |isbn=978-0905272023}}</ref>