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When we consider Dickens's life and work, in comparison with that of the two great poets we have been studying, the contrast is startling. While Tennyson and Browning were being educated for the life of literature, and shielded most tenderly from the hardships of the world, Dickens, a poor, obscure, and suffering child, was helping to support a shiftless family by pasting labels on blacking bottles, sleeping under a counter like a homeless cat, and once a week timidly approaching the big prison where his father was confined for debt. In 1836 his Pickwick was published, and life was changed as if a magician had waved his wand over him. While the two great poets were slowly struggling for recognition, Dickens, with plenty of money and too much fame, was the acknowledged literary hero of England, the idol of immense audiences which gathered to applaud him wherever he appeared. And there is also this striking contrast between the novelist and the poets,--that while the whole tendency of the age was toward realism, away from the extremes of the romanticists and from the oddities and absurdities of the early novel writers, it was precisely by emphasizing oddities and absurdities, by making caricatures rather than characters, that Dickens first achieved his popularity.

Charles Dickens, in full Charles John Huffam Dickens, (born February 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England—died June 9, 1870, Gad’s Hill, near Chatham, Kent), English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend.Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen, and technological developments as well as the qualities of his work enabled his fame to spread worldwide very quickly. His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work that were given less weight by his contemporaries, his popularity has never ceased. The most abundantly comic of English authors, he was much more than a great entertainer. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his apprehension of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in 19th-century literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.

A collection of pieces that Dickens wrote for his journal Household Words. CONTENTS: The long voyage -- The begging-letter writer -- A child's dream of a star -- Our English watering-place -- Our French watering-place -- Bill-sticking -- Births: Mrs. Meek, of a son -- Lying awake -- The ghost of art -- Out of town -- Out of the season -- A poor man's tale of a patent -- The noble savage -- A flight -- The detective police -- Three detective anecdotes: The pair of gloves. The artful touch. The sofa -- On duty with Inspector Field -- Down with the tide -- A walk in a workhouse -- Prince Bull: a fairy tale -- A plated article -- Our honourable friend -- Our school -- Our vestry -- Our bore -- A monument of French folly.

A collection of pieces from Dickens wrote for his journal Household Words. Contents: The long voyage -- The begging-letter writer -- A child's dream of a star -- Our English watering-place -- Our French watering-place -- Bill-sticking -- Births: Mrs. Meek, of a son -- Lying awake -- The ghost of art -- Out of town -- Out of the season -- A poor man's tale of a patent -- The noble savage -- A flight -- The detective police -- Three detective anecdotes: The pair of gloves. The artful touch. The sofa -- On duty with Inspector Field -- Down with the tide -- A walk in a workhouse -- Prince Bull: a fairy tale -- A plated article -- Our honourable friend -- Our school -- Our vestry -- Our bore -- A monument of French folly