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Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author
Kenneth Benson
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| Seminar Introduction |
 | | NYPL, Berg Collection | |
When Charles Dickens first began to publish the amusing sketches and stories that would later be collected in his first book, the pseudonymously published Sketches by Boz (1836), he was a little-known newspaper reporter working in London. By the end of his amazing career, he had produced an enormous body of work as both author and editor, including such classic and perennially popular novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Great Expectations.
In this seminar, The New York Public Library's Kenneth Benson surveys the life and works of the most beloved author of the Victorian era. Readers will follow Dickens through his childhood, exploring how his writings were both influenced by and reflected his family history and the wider currents of Victorian society. Overcoming the hardships of his youth, he launched his literary career in the 1830s, and his rise was meteoric. This seminar traces the course of Dickens's ever-increasing fame, from the humorous hijinks of the early Pickwick Papers to the artistic mastery of the great novels of the 1850s and 60s.
Providing a lively introduction to the astonishing career of the "Inimitable Boz," as well as to the heart of a very private man, this seminar is richly illustrated with handwritten manuscript pages, portraits, prints and drawings, and other rare artifacts drawn from the special collections of The New York Public Library, including Dickens's personal custom-bound prompt copies of his works, which he used in his wildly successful public readings. Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author celebrates the writer who spoke of his bond with his immense reading public, with no exaggeration or false modesty, as "personally affectionate and like no other man's"--and it is a bond that endures.
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| Learning Objectives |
- Recognize how the works of Charles Dickens relate to key stages of his life and career.
- Identify two works in which Dickens's family and childhood had a clear influence.
- List two of Dickens's later novels and identify at least two ways they differ in style from his earlier works.
- Consider the rise of Dickens's fame and identify three ways it impacted the evolution of his literature.
- List three ways that Dickens was able to both maintain and expand his audience.
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| Sessions |
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| Credits |
This seminar was derived from The New York Public Library's Collector's Editions of Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol and Other Haunting Tales, published by Doubleday in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Illustrative materials are drawn primarily from the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. Charles Dickens, 1812{A150}1870: An Anthology from the Berg Collection (The New York Public Library, 1990), compiled by Lola L. Szladits, late curator of the Berg Collection, also provided both information and inspiration.
Copyright 2002 The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. All rights reserved. All images used in this seminar are from the collections of The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library and are intended for personal or research use only. For reproduction or any other use of any of these images, contact NYPL Photographic Services & Permissions at permissions@nypl.org.
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| Technical Requirements |
To appreciate this seminar experience, it is critical that you have the appropriate software, plug-ins, and network connections. Please take the time to download the latest versions of the plug-ins mentioned below if you do not already have them.Browser: Netscape versions 4.x up to 4.76, or Internet Explorer versions 4.x or later. Your browser must be JavaScript-enabled and must be set to accept cookies.
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