Though Charles Dickens’ novels continued to be read by large numbers of readers, his literary reputation was an eclipse. There was a tendency to see his novels as appropriate for children and young adults. Russian writers came into vogue and were generally regarded as superior to Dickens from 1880 through the early part of the twentieth century. This preference is ironic because the Russian novelists both admired Dickens and learned from him. Turgenev praised Dickens’ work and even wrote for Dickens’ magazine, Household Words, during the Crimean War. Tolstoy wrote of Dickens, “All his characters are my personal friends – I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them, and what a spirit there was in all he wrote.” Dostoevsky was so impressed that he imitated the death of Little Nell, including the sentimentality, in describing the death of Nelli Valkovsky in The Insulted and the Injured (1862). Supposedly, during his exile in Siberia, he read only Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. Even if this story is apocryphal, Dickens’ influence on Uncle’s Dream and The Friend of the Family (1859), written while Dostoevsky was in Siberia, is unmistakable. Ironically, English critics in the 1880s were puzzled by Dostoevsky’s similarities to Dickens.
Dickens’ literary standing was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays written by George Orwell and Edmund Wilson, who called him “the greatest writers of his time,” and full-length study by Humphrey House, The Dickens World. Critics discovered complexity, darkness, and even bitterness in his novels, and by the 1960s some critics felt that, like Shakespeare. Dickens could not be classified into existing literary categories. This view of Dickens as incomparable continues to the present day. Edgar Johnson expresses the prevailing modern view in his assessments of Dickens: “Far more than a great entertainer, a great comic writer, he looks into the abyss. He is one of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art.” This is not to say that every critic or reader accepts Johnson’s view; F.R. Leavis could not take Dickens so seriously: “The adult mind doesn’t as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness.” In the resurgence of Dickens’ reputation, his essays, sketches, and articles have received attention and praise. K.J. Fielding believes, “If he were not so well known as a novelist, he might have been recognized as a great essayist.”[36]
Dickens as a modern novelist and all his books are modern novels. Dickens didn’t know at what really point he became a novelist. The novel being a modern product is one of the few things to which we really can apply that disgusting method of thought – the method of evolution. His Christmas stories publishing in the Household Words and All the Year Round had great fame in his time, but it doesn’t mean that it is forgotten nowadays. The Christmas theme always attracted people, and the warmth, loveliness, kindliness of these stories fills everybody’s heart with joy and happiness. They are translated into many languages and are read present days and I hope they will be loved by the readers many centuries. There was painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading form the modern world. We have watched a little longer, and with a great relief we begin to realize that it is the modern world that is fading.
Now Dickens must definitely be considered in the light of the changes which his soul foresaw. Dickens has done much; he belongs to Queen Victoria as much as Addison belongs to Queen Anne, and it is not only Queen Anne dead. But Dickens, in a dark prophetic kind of way, belongs to the developments. His name comes to the tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or Country Council Steam Boats or Guilds of Play. Charles Dickens was a very great man, and there are many ways of testing and stating the fact. But one permissible way is to say this, that he was an ignorant man, ill-read in the past, and often confused about the present. Yet he remains great and true, and even essentially reliable, if we suppose him to have known not only all that went before his lifetime, but also all that was to come after.[37]
He was simple man; he loved ordinary people from lower classes. He did not evaluate them by their education, job or economic situation. That is why many of his heroes of his novels and especially of Christmas stories were poor, pity men who earned for living hardly but honestly. He believed in better future. This optimism is mentionable in most of his creative works. Capitalist society did not appeal him because he wanted people from lower classes to live less unhappy, less hungry, less insulted. Reading the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens we meet such problems, sentimental nuances. He was realistic writer and showed real picture of life with all of its good and bad sides, however, humor, high mood of these stories make us to believe in happy, joyful future.
“My trust in people, who rule, is insignificant. My trust in people, who are being ruled, is boundless.”
Charles Dickens
Bibliography
The sources in Azerbaijan
1) Əhmədoğlu B. - Çarlz Dikkens. Kommunist qəz. Bakı, 1962, 7 fevral
2) “Ədəbiyyat və incəsənət” qəz. - Çarlz Dikkens. Bakı, 1970, 10 fevral
The sources in Russian
1) А.А. АникстиВ.В. Ивашев - Чарльз Диккенс: Собрание сочинений в 30-ти томах. Т.12, Москва, 1959
2) А.А. Аникст - Диккенс Чарльз. Т.1. Москва, 1957
3) Катарский Игорь Максимилианович - Диккенс в России: Середина XIX века. Москва, 1966
4) Мадзигон М.В. - Реализм раннего творчества Чарльза Диккенса. Тбилиси, 1962
5) Скуратовская Л. - Творчество Диккенса. Москва, 1969
6) Уилсон Энгус - Мир Чарльза Диккенса. Москва, 1975
7) Урнов М.В. - Неподражаемый Чарльз Диккенс. Москва, 1990. стр. 204-257
Thesources in English
1) Ackroyd, Peter - Dickens. London, 1990
2) Butt, John E. and Kathleen Tillotson - Dickens at Work. 1957, reprinted 1982
3) Chesterton G.K. - Charles Dickens. London, 1903, reprinted 1977
4) Churchill, Reginald C. - Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism. London: Routledge (1836-1974-75)
5) Collins, Philip - Dickens and Crime. New York, 1962
6) Collins, Philip (ed.) - Dickens, the Critical Heritage. New York, 1971, on his critical reception in 1836-82
7) Collins, Philip - A Dickens Bibliography. 1970, offprinted from George Watson/ New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1969, vol.3, pp. 779-850
8) Dexter, Walter - The Letters by Charles Dickens. 3 vol., London, 1938
9) Fielding, K.J. – Speeches. London, 1960, pp. 124-127
10) Fielding, K.J. - A Critical Introduction. London, revised edition 1966
11) Ford, George H. - A Second Guide to Research. London, 1978, pp. 34-113
12) Ford, George H. - Dickens and His Readers. London, 1955, reprinted 1976
13) Ford, George H. and L. Lane (eds.) - The Dickens Critics. London, 1961, reprinted 1976
14) Garis, Robert - The Dickens Theatre. London, 1965
15) Gissing, George R. - Charles Dickens.A Critical Study. London, 1898, reissued 1976
16) Gissing, George R., abr. - Forster's Life of Dickens London: Chapman & Hall, 1903.
17) Johson, Edgar - Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph 3 vol., Manchester, 1952
18) Johnson, Edgar - The Heart Of Charles Dickens, As Revealed in His Letters to AngelaBurdett-Coutts. New York, 1952, reprinted 1976
19) Kaplan, Fred - Dickens: A Biograph. London, 1988
20) Kitton, Frederic G. - Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality. London, 1956
21) Miller, J. Hillis - Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. London, 1958, reissued 1969
22) Orwell, George – Dickens:In Critical Essays. Boston, 1946, pp. 7-56
23) Rice, C. M. - The Story of Our Mutual Friend: Transcribed into Phonetic Notation from the Work of Charles Dickens. Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1920.
24) Wall, Stephen (ed.) - Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology. London, 1970
25) Wilson, Angus - The World of Charles Dickens. New York, 1970
26) Wilson, Edmund - Dickens: The Two Scrooges in “The Wound and the Bow”. London, 1941, pp. 1-104
27) Ward, Henry S. - The Real Dickens Land. London: Chapman & Hall, 1904.
28) Welsh, Charles - Character Portraits from Dickens. London: Chatto & Windus, 1908.
[1] А.А. Аникст Диккенс Чарльз. Т 1. Москва, 1957. стр. 7-12
[2]Philip Collins - A Dickens Bibliography, 1970, offprinted from George Watson, New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1969, vol.3, pp. 779-182
[3] Мадзигон М.В. - Реализм раннего творчества Чарльза Диккенса, Тбилиси, 1962. стр. 24-37
[4]George R. Gissing – Charles Dickens/ A Critical Study, London, 1947, reissued 1976. pp. 105-116
[5]George Orwell – Dickens / In Critical Essays, Boston, 1946. pp. 7-20
[6]John E. Butt and Kathleen Tillotson – Dickens at Work, New York, 1957, reprinted 1982. pp.203-212
[7]George H. Ford – Dickens and His Readers, London, 1955, reprinted 1974. pp.46-48
[8]Fred Kaplan – A Biography, London, 1988. pp.138
[9] Урнов М.В. – Неподражаемый Чарльз Диккенс, Москва, 1990. стр.204-257
[10]Philip Collins – Dickens, the Critical Heritage, New York, 1971, on his critical reception in 1836-1882. pp.68-81
[11]Reginald C. Churchill – Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism. London: Routledge (1836-1974-75), a selective, partly annotated bibliography. pp.98-123
[12]Angus Wilson – The World of Charles Dickens, New York, 1970. pp.58-64
[13]Ackroyd Peter – Dickens, London, 1990. p.85
[14]Ədəbiyyat və incəsənət qəz. Çarlz Dikkens, Baki, 1970, 10 fevral
[15] Скуратовская Л. – Творчество Диккенса, Москва, 1969. стр.92-96
[16]George H. Ford and L. Lane (eds.), - The Dickens Critics, London, 1961, reprinted 1976. pp. 148-158
[17]J. Hillis Miller – Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels, London, 1958, reissued 1969. pp. 62-69
[18]Stephen Wall (ed.) – Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology, London, 1970. pp. 70-92
[19] Уилсон Энгус – Мир Чарльза Диккенса, Москва, 1975. стр.48-52
[20]G.K. Chesterton – Charles Dickens, London, 1903, reprinted 1977. pp. 114-127
[21]George H. Ford – A Second Guide to Research, London, 1978. pp.34-113
[22] Катарский Игорь Максимилианович – Диккенс в России. Середина XIX века, Москва, 1966. стр.65-77
[23]Philip Colins – Dickens and Crime, New York, 1962. pp. 267-281
[24] А.А. Аникст и В.В. Ивашев – Чарльз Диккенс / Собрание сочинений в 30-ти томах. Т.12., Москва, 1959. стр.81-89
[25]Walter Dexter – The Letters by Charles Dickens. 3 vol., London, 1938
[26]Edmund Wilson – Dickens: Two Scrooges, in the Wound and the Bow, London, 1941. pp.1-104
[27]K.J. Fielding – Speeches, London, 1960. pp.124-127
[28]K.J. Fielding – A Critical Introduction, London, revised edition 1966, pp.78-86
[29]Edgar Johnson – Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vol., Manchester, 1952. pp.39-42
[30]Chesterton G.K. – Charles Dickens, London, 1903, reprinted 1977. pp.76-85
[31]Edgar Johnson – The Heart of Charles Dickens, As Revealed in His Letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts, New York, 1952, reprinted 1976. pp.142-150
[32]Frederic Kitton G. - Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, London, 1900. pp. 77-102
[33]Əhmədoğlu B. – Çarlz Dikkens, Kommunist, Bakı, 1962, 7 fevral
[34]Welsh Charles – Character Portraits from Dickens, London, 1908
[35]George R. Gissing abr. – Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1943
[36]Rice, C. M. - The Story of Our Mutual Friend: Transcribed into Phonetic Notation from the Work of Charles Dickens/ Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1920. pp.152-158