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 In 1836 Dickens also began to publish in monthly installments THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB. This form of serial publication became a standard method of writing and producing fiction in the Victorian period and affected the literary methods of Dickens and other novelists. So great was Dickens's success with the procedure -- summed up in the formula, "Make them laugh; make them cry; make them wait" -- that PICKWICK became one of the most popular works of the time, continuing to be so after it was published in book form in 1837. The comic heroes of the novel, the antiquarian members of the Pickwick Club, scour the English countryside for local points of interest and are involved in a variety of humorous adventures which reveal the characteristics of English social life. At a later stage of the novel, the chairman of the club, Samuel Pickwick, is involved in a lawsuit which lands him in the Fleet debtors' prison. Here the lighthearted atmosphere of the novel changes, and the reader is given intimations of the gloom and sympathy with which Dickens was to imbue his later works. During the years of PICKWICK's serialization, Dickens became editor of a new monthly, BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. When PICKWICK was completed, he began publishing his new novel, OLIVER TWIST, in this magazine -- a practice he continued in his later magazines, HOUSEHOLD WORDS and ALL THE YEAR ROUND. OLIVER expresses Dickens's interest in the life of the slums to the fullest, as it traces the fortunes of an innocent orphan through the London streets. It seems remarkable today that this novel's fairly frank treatment of criminals like Bill Sikes, prostitutes like Nancy, and "fences" like Fagin could have been acceptable to the Victorian reading public. But so powerful was Dickens' portrayal of the "little boy lost" amid the lowlife of the East End that the limits of his audience's tolerance were gradually stretched. Dickens was now embarked on the most consistently successful career of any 19th-century author after Sir Walter Scott. He could do no wrong as far as his faithful readership was concerned; yet his books for the next decade were not to achieve the standard of his early triumphs. These works include: NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (1838-1839), still cited for its exposé of brutality at an English boys' school, Dotheboys Hall; THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (1840-1841), still remembered for reaching a high (or low) point of sentimentality in its portrayal of the sufferings of Little Nell; and BARNABY RUDGE (1841), still read for its interest as a historical novel, set amid the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780. In 1842 Dickens, who was as popular in America as he was in England, went on a 5-month lecture tour of the United States, speaking out strongly for the abolition of slavery and other reforms. On his return he wrote AMERICAN NOTES, sharply critical of the cultural backwardness and aggressive materialism of American life. He made further capital of these observations in his next novel, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1843-1844), in which the hero retreats from the difficulties of making his way in England only to find that survival is even more trying on the American frontier. During the years in which CHUZZLEWIT appeared, Dickens also published two Christmas stories, A CHRISTMAS CAROL and THE CHIMES, which became as much part of the season as plum pudding.
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Source: From ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY (17 VOLS), Gale Group, © 1998 Gale. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group. |
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