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Топики по английскому языку (English topics)

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Charles Dickens

Four of the best English writers of the 19th century: Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte and Elisabeth Gaskell were called by Karl Marx the "Glorious School of English Novelists". Marx said that these writers had done more to show social and political truths to the world than all the politicians, journalists and moralists put together. They gave a picture of the English upper classes with all their selfishness and pride, their ignorance and greed.

One of the greatest writers of this school of novelists was Charles Dickens. He was born in 1812 in the family of a small government official in the city of Portsmouth. There Charles first went to school. Never a strong child, he could not join his friends in games or any sports. He spent most of his free time reading various books. In 1821 the family moved to London where his father was soon ruined. His father was thrown into a debtor's prison called Marshalsea and the whole family went to live there. For many years the dark buildings of the Marshalsea prison were the family's home. Charles though only ten years of age had to leave school and began a long and hard struggle with poverty. In order to help the family in some way he went to work at a blacking factory. He worked from early morning till late at night. He suffered so much pain as a child laborer in the factory, that years later at the height of his adult fame, the childhood pain continued to haunt him, and to speak of that time, caused him great distress.

Many years passed before Charles returned to school. When he graduated from school he became a reporter at one of London's newspapers. He did his work so well that he was considered to be the best parliamentary reporter in London. The work of a reporter led him to journalism, and journalism led to novel-writing. In 1836 when only twenty-four years of age, Charles Dickens wrote his first book "Sketches by Boz". This book was followed by "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" and in two years by "Oliver Twist". These novels brought him fame both in England and in other countries. From that time on Charles Dickens devoted himself to literature. His most famous novels are "Hard Times", "David Copperfield", "Domby and Son" and others. Charles Dickens died in 1870, at the age of fifty-eight. In his books he protested against social injustice in bourgeois society, the work-houses, the debtor's prisons and the ruthless exploitation of children. It is this exposure of social injustice in bourgeois society that makes his books so important though he did not call for active struggle against the exploiting classes.