CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) - OLIVER TWIST (1839)

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-l870)

Charles Dickens was born at Portsea, near Portsmouth in the 1812 from John Dickens, a naval clerk for the navy, and from his wife Elizabeth Barrow. He was the second of eight sons. When he was five years old his family moved itself to Chatham, in the county of the Kent. Until that moment his infancy was an idyllic period; he defined himself "a small child and not particularly suffocated from the attentions". Charles passed the free time in the nature engaged in readings, with one particular predilection for novels of Henry Fielding.

When he was ten years old, his family was forced to move itself to Camden Town, a quarter of London better known like Camden Market. His family was enough rich and it was enrolled at a private school, but his father, who spent too much money in defending and supporting his social position, was arrested for debits. When he was twelve years old, he was thought enough grown-up in order to work and he was sent glue labels on the jars of shoe polish for ten hours at day; he earned six shillings at week and he had to use them to pay for his family and himself. Charles, in order to earn money began also to sell opium, substance that he began to assume.

After some year the economic situation of the family improved, partially because of the money inherited from his father's family. Also when the family was freed from the prison, Charles's mother did not make he to stop to work in the factory because it was of a relative. Dickens never forgave she, and the resentment for his situation and his conditions became the subject of his works.

When he was fifteen years old, he entered in a study of lawyers like practicing with good perspectives to become lawyer, but he didn't like the profession and he began to study stenography, becoming reporter parliamentarian and having the possibility to travel in all Great Britain; from his job of journalist was born his first work, Sketches by Boz. When he was twenty years old he wrote his first famous novel: The Pickwick Papers.

When he was twenty-six years old he published on the Evening Chronicle, in monthly chapter, the novel Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

Then he married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of the director of the newspaper, with who he had 10 children. With his wife he went to USA and Italy.

When he return to England he founded a liberal newspaper against the conservative laws on the agricultural products. In 1846 the first number of the Daily News was published: it talked about improvement, progress, education, religious and civil freedom. After 17 numbers he resigned from the task saying that his clerks were incompetents.

Then he separated from his wife and went to France.

The 9^th of June in  1859 he was involved in the railway disaster of Staple Hurst. In the accident, six railway carriage of the train, on which Dickens travelled, fell from a bridge in repair; only the railway carriage of the first class, where there was Dickens, remained on the bridge.

In 1870 he was hit by an apoplectic stroke and died.

OLIVER TWIST (1839)

Oliver Twist is a novel written by Charles Dickens in 1838. It was published in chapters. Like many jobs of Dickens, Oliver Twist wanted to carry to the attention of public a series of evils of the age, between which the job in factory, the job of the children, the employment of children for the crime. The novel is sarcastic and has tense of black humour, even if it means to raise much serious problems, revealing the fundamental hypocrisy of the Victorian age.

Oliver Twist was born from an unmarried mother in a Victorian workhouse (a place where employment was provided for the destitute). His mother died as soon as he was born. Oliver remained in the workhouse for nine month and then he was sent to a branch-workhouse for juvenile offenders against Poor Laws managed by mr. Bumble. He was very small because he ate not enough and he was also very intelligent. When he was 14 he was sent to an undertaker, mr. Sowerberry. So he was unhappy, also because the undertaker's wife and a boy, who worked there, didn't love him and treated him very bad. So he run away and met a boy who took him to Fagin, the boss, called the jeweller because he taught to children how steal thing. Then Oliver was arrested for a theft of a handkerchief, but he was saved by the owner of a library and went to the house with Mr Brownlow. But Fagin and his children heard that Oliver talked about them and knew that thieves were hang. So Fagin kept Oliver and forced him to go to steal in rich house. During the theft Oliver was hurt and Shikes left him on the earth. Mrs Rose helped him. Monks, Oliver's step-brother, wanted kill him to have all the inheritance of their mother. So Nancy went to Mr Brownlow's house to warn Mrs Rose. Then Mr Brownlow met Miss Maylie and Mrs Rose and get the police arrest Monks. So they could know the truth and live happy together.