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Dickens’ characters leave indelible marks on Western civilization
By Kat McKerrow

Perhaps no novelist has left such an indelible mark on Western literature and culture as Charles Dickens. His legacy includes larger-than-life characters such as Miss Havisham, Bill Sykes and Mr. Micawber, who have themselves become cultural icons.

His writings have also bequeathed to the Western world some unforgettable predicaments. What Dickens reader can’t vividly recall Pip being collared by escaped convict Magwitch in a marshy graveyard, workhouse orphan Oliver Twist requesting more food or Ebenezer Scrooge receiving an unwanted call from his dead partner Marley?

The stories are as vibrant and engrossing today as they were 150 years ago, when the literary death of a beloved character, Little Nell, sparked a frenzy at the docks in New York. And because of the proliferation of theatrical, film and radio adaptations that have been popular since Dickens’ day, his works have entered popular culture and reached audiences that have never even read one of his novels.

Dickens’ life was both the best of times and the worst of times, to paraphrase A Tale of Two Cities. Born at the stroke of midnight on Feb. 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, Charles John Huffam Dickens spent his formative years in an idyll of outdoor wanderings and voracious reading in the southeastern English county of Kent. In 1822, the Dickens family moved to London, with disastrous results.

His spendthrift father was incarcerated in debtors’ prison, and Charles was torn from school and sent to work in a boot-blacking factory. Although he never publicly spoke about this dark passage in his life, leaving it for his close friend and biographer John Forster to reveal after Dickens’ death, echoes of this family tragedy can be found in many of his stories.

At the age of 15, Dickens went to work as a junior law clerk, learning shorthand. He quit in the following year to become a freelance court reporter and, eventually, a parliamentary journalist. Becoming disillusioned with politics and politicians, however, Dickens turned his interest to social reform.

Throughout his literary career, the plight of the needy and disadvantaged, as well as the hypocrisy of those who claim to have the poor’s best interests in mind, were major themes of his work.

In 1836, Dickens published his first collection of writings, Sketches by Boz, as well as beginning the serialization of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (most commonly known as The Pickwick Papers). Pickwick’s immediate success established a legendary writing career that would include 15 full-length novels, seemingly countless novellas and short stories, and a plethora of articles, essays, criticisms, poems and plays.

Indeed, Dickens was always busy, and he jokingly referred to himself as “The Inimitable,” a nickname bestowed upon him by an early schoolmaster. His family life was no less full: He fathered 10 children with his wife, Catherine Hogarth. The marriage was notoriously unhappy, however, and the couple eventually separated.

Dickens died on June 8, 1870, after suffering a stroke. He had been hard at work on a new novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the intended ending of which will forever remain a puzzle.

Although he had wished to be buried simply and unostentatiously at Rochester Cathedral, his remains were entombed in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey.

As much a cultural phenomenon as a popular author, Dickens, unsurprisingly, is the inspiration for a multitude of collectibles. Beginning with the immense popularity of The Pickwick Papers, the public has demanded Dickens-themed stuff, most – if not all – of it unauthorized. Manufacturers as diverse as makers of textiles and cigars began placing the words “Pickwick,” “Weller” and “Boz” (Dickens’ nom de plume) into their advertising. As late as the 1940s, members of the Pickwick Club could be found in marketing campaigns for Hennessy cognac.

Likewise, Oliver Twist eventually became a brand of tobacco, its tins emblazoned with original illustrations from the novel. Characters from Little Dorrit were used in an early 20th-century advertisement for Sanagen tonic for “nervous exhaustion” that even featured phony Dickensian text in which the hero recommends the product for the restoration of the poor, overworked heroine.

A fun, relatively inexpensive way to collect Dickensian advertising is with ephemeral items such as cigarette cards and postcards. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of companies gave away these premiums featuring Dickensian scenes and characters. However, today’s collector should be warned: Some series of Dickens cigarette cards have been reproduced since the 1980s.

Favorite Dickens characters have also been depicted in collectible figurines throughout the decades. The most popular among collectors are those in Royal Doulton’s miniatures line. From 1922 until 1983, 24 favorite characters were produced. In 1994, a limited-edition figurine of Dickens himself was commissioned.

Royal Doulton’s incorporation of Dickensian subjects certainly doesn’t end there. The pottery company produced a number of Dickens-themed stand-alone pieces and lines of tableware. Dickens Ware, introduced in 1908, featured illustrations of memorable characters designed by Doulton’s most famous artist, Charles Noke.

This series was comprised of place settings and tea sets, as well as vases, pitchers, flowerpots, dressing-table items and candlesticks.

Royal Doulton, as well as a handful of other potteries, also manufactured many character jugs (also referred to as “Toby jugs”) in the likenesses of beloved Dickens characters. The early illustrators of the stories, perhaps most notably Hablot Knight Browne and George Cruikshank, had drawn many of Dickens’ already larger-than-life figures with exaggerated and comical features that translate easily to this jovial medium.

Of course, books by and about Dickens are probably the most-fitting bits of Dickensiana. Bound first editions of the novels, as well as the serial circulars in which the stories first appeared, are highly collectible and can fetch high prices at auction. In 2008, Christie’s of New York sold a first-edition of Oliver Twist for $229,000. The copy was unique in that it was personally inscribed by Dickens to fellow novelist William Ainsworth. Two years later, a first-edition copy of A Christmas Carol, also signed by Dickens, but this time made out to his friend, actor William Macready, was auctioned at Sotheby’s. It realized nearly $292,000.

However, there are thousands of interesting and antiquarian books by and about Charles Dickens that can be easily found for far less than a quarter of a million dollars. Biographies (including the landmark The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster), volumes of literary criticism, picture-book adaptations of his works, tour guides to “Dickens’ England” and even Dickens-themed cookbooks make interesting collections for the bibliophile.

5/3/2012
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