- Entry
- Reader's guide
- Entries A-Z
- Subject index
Dickens, Charles
There are few happy children in the works of the renowned British novelist Charles Dickens (1812–1870). From the orphaned Pip in Great Expectations (1860), to lame Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843), from starving and exploited Oliver in Oliver Twist (1839), to doomed Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1841), Dickensian children form a roll call of social deprivation, parental abandonment, and grinding poverty. This entry examines Dickens’s key works and some of the signature features of his writing about children and childhood.
A Bleak Childhood
Few novels explore the impact of 19th-century urban society on its children to the degree of Dickens’ Bleak House (1852–1853); indeed, far from the problem often seen in criticism of children in fiction—that of the search for the ‘real ...
- Loading...
