If Dickens was immortal, he would be 200 years old today. If he was alive nowadays, he would probably have lots of friends on Facebook and he would be trending topic on Twitter quite often. He enjoyed such a fame and popularity during his lifetime that no other British writer has equalled him since then. Even Queen Victoria is said to have read his novels fervently. These were published serially in newspapers and delivered in monthly instalments, which were awaited eagerly.
The portrait he made of
Victorian London is unforgettable, part of our cultural subconscious: an age of Puritan morality and strict
discipline, with fathers depicted as god-like figures allowed to beat children
and submissive wives; that awful fog that even made pedestrians die from walking
into the Thames; the horror of prisons where whole families had to live due to
debts; the chimney sweeps and the cruel conditions for orphans at boarding schools... He was
the first great novelist in English to make childhood central to his fiction. Deeply wounded by the experiences of his early life, he was not only an entertainer but also an influential spokesman who
attacked that new capitalist society and soulless and sordid industrialism.
Although he wrote for adults, not for children, I first encountered
Dickens when I was only eight. I remember it perfectly because it was thanks to
a classics illustrated comic book I got as a present for my First Holy Communion. Among other
versions by authors such as Jules Verne or Stevenson, it
included A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield. Those well-rounded and enduring characters struck me. So
trapped and fascinated did I feel that, when I started to read those lively plots, I could not give them up until the end. I was just a child,
but now I believe it is incredible that at that early age I already got acquainted with Paris and the French Revolution or 19th London. Sometimes I wonder what kind of literary and historical
references children have nowadays. We used to follow the adventures of D´Artagnan and The Three Musketeers, The Quixote, Tom Sawyer or Willy Fog in his 80 Days Around The World. Now
they follow Sponge Bob and Dragon Ball... Maybe it is also just a question of belonging to another age...
I remember that 30 years ago, in my First Holy Comunion I got to as a present a classics illustrated comic book with a lot of versions by diferent authors. One of this authors was Dickens.It`s posible that it was same book. I remember that it was a tipical present in that days.
ReplyDeletejosel
Watching Ben Hur on TV last night I recalled that wonderful present again. Among so many classics, it also included a version of this novel by Lewis Wallace. If you have sisters and you used to take it right out of each other´s hands when you were children, be sure it is the very same book!
DeleteWhen I read "Great Expectations" book at 19 years old, or I see this masterpiece in a comic book at 8years old, or I watch it on TV at 37 years old (I remember this last christhmas the great serie on BBC Channel), I always think about Pip and Estella, and the whole story...the story of love and redemption.
ReplyDeleteI read this blog "Dickens, 200th birthday" and it makes me remind me of the points of life, love, hate, dead,...they are similars as nowadays. Charles Dickens was connected with real life, and real persons...and always with the people who wants to read about the books.
So universal is Dickens´ portrait of humankind that it is still valid nowadays. Two centuries later, and beyond the land of his birth, the world shares the same problems. Misery and crisis continue. "Great Expectations" is about love and rejection, suffering, maturity, friendship, vulnerability... passions that have always made us human. Wonderful!
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