Charles Dickens Research Paper

Charles Dickens was an English writer in the Victorian era. His world renowned career started in his mid-teens when he became an errand boy at an attorney’s office which led to him to become a very successful shorthand reporter. In 1834, Charles took on the soon- to- be legendary pen name, “Boz” (Dickens: A Brief Biography need page number).After taking on the pet name, Dickens’ career truly took off. First he wrote Pickwick Papers and then went on to write some more major recognizable pieced. One of Dickens’ most famous novels is A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of the only two works Dickens wrote in historical fiction. Most of his pieces were humorous and about his life experiences, however, A Tale of Two Cities took a more serious

Dickens writes in the Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of time and it was the worst of times . . .” (Dickens 1) This quote can refer to the issues of the French Revolution socially. Through a social outlook this quote means it was the best of times for the nobleman and it was the worst of times for the peasants. “Dickens showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of English society. . .” (Dr Andrzej Diniejko paragraph one sentence two). Dickens’ was scared that the British would end up in a violent revolutionary war just like the French. In The French Revolution in the Popular Imagination: A Tale of Two Cities the author writes,, “In the eighteen-fifties, Charles Dickens was concerned that social problems in England, particularly those relating to the condition of the poor, might provoke a mass reaction on the scale of the French Revolution.”(Meltem Kiran-Raw Introduction sentence one) Charles compares France to Great Britain and how easy it would be for Great Britain to have their own violent revolutionary war. The novel Tale of Two Cities goes into intensive detail about the issues of social injustices in the time period of the French Revolution. Both Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle believed the lower-class French had to take cruel treatment from the nobility. Dickens felt sympathy for the lower-class because he went through poverty and cruel treatments in his early life. Charles’ father was terrible with his family’s finances and wanted to be wealthy desperately. This greed caused Charles’ father to become in debt and eventually be imprisoned. (The Influence of Charles Dickens on Literature Education NEED PAGE NUMBER) Charles and his family living in poverty caused him to relate and sympathize with the lower-class French.