Thank you for your visit today to The Circumlocution Office. At the Circumlocution Office we look at the life and times of one of history’s great writers, Charles Dickens who lived from 1812 – 1870.
Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era and the creator of some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters and campaigner for social injustice.
Even though he was born over two centuries ago, Dickens’s work transcends his time, language and culture. To this day, his work continue to inspire popular culture, including television, film, art and literature and he remains a massive contemporary influence throughout the world.
Quotations
Latest Quotations
- Finding in the lowest depth a deeper still.
- He took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, … were a drawback on my learning.
- Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no.
- I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.
- We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it.
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Colourful characters.
Charles Dickens created some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters such as Fagin, the leader of the gang of child thieves who teach Oliver Twist how to pick pockets; Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly focal character of A Christmas Carol; Wilkins Micawber, the feckless, struggling but charming and eternally optimistic man who works with the greedy Uriah Heep in David Copperfield and Samuel Pickwick, the retired businessman and founder of the Pickwick Club who embarks on a series of adventures with friends Snodgrass, Tupman, Winkle and servant Sam Weller.
Abel Magwitch Belle Bob Cratchit David Copperfield Ebenezer Scrooge Estella Fred Ghost of Christmas Past Ghost of Christmas Present Jacob Marley Jaggers Joe Gargery John Jarndyce Josiah Bounderby Mrs. Joe Gargery Pip Samuel Pickwick Sam Weller Stephen Blackpool Thomas Gradgrind
- 1855 Portland Rum Riot. In the United States, working-class residents in Portland, Maine, riot after discovering their temperance-advocating mayor Neal Dow was storing large amounts of rum inside City Hall. The disturbance left one man dead and seven others wounded.
- 1856 Wellington College foundations. The foundation stone for Wellington College at Crowthorne, Berkshire is laid by Queen Victoria. The college was originally built for the education of orphaned sons of the officers of the British Army and the East India Company.
- 1868 TUC formed. The inaugural meeting of what became known as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) took place at the Mechanics’ Institute in David Street, Manchester.