Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Notes on references
- PART I LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
- 1 The life of Dickens 1: before Ellen Ternan
- 2 The life of Dickens 2: after Ellen Ternan
- 3 Dickens's lives
- 4 Victorian stage adaptations and novel appropriations
- 5 Reviewing Dickens in the Victorian periodical press
- 6 The European context
- 7 Major twentieth-century critical responses
- 8 Modern stage adaptations
- 9 Modern screen adaptations
- 10 The heritage industry
- 11 Neo-Victorian Dickens
- PART II SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
- Further reading
- Index
7 - Major twentieth-century critical responses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Notes on references
- PART I LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
- 1 The life of Dickens 1: before Ellen Ternan
- 2 The life of Dickens 2: after Ellen Ternan
- 3 Dickens's lives
- 4 Victorian stage adaptations and novel appropriations
- 5 Reviewing Dickens in the Victorian periodical press
- 6 The European context
- 7 Major twentieth-century critical responses
- 8 Modern stage adaptations
- 9 Modern screen adaptations
- 10 The heritage industry
- 11 Neo-Victorian Dickens
- PART II SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
At the beginning of the twentieth century Dickens did not enjoy a high reputation among literary critics (this state continued until the 1930s). After Dickens's death there had been a noticeable tendency to regard him merely as a jovial novelist for the half-educated. In this climate George Gissing raised a supportive voice (1898). However, as Gissing was a novelist working in the age of realism, he valued Dickens where the latter approximated this literary ideal. G. K. Chesterton (1906) felt it was a misguided defence. He praised Dickens's exaggeration and glorified the fecundity of his comic imagination. In his opinion, ‘the units of Dickens, the primary elements, are not the stories, but the characters who affect the stories – or, more often still, the characters who do not affect the stories’. Five years later, Chesterton gathered his introductions for the Everyman's Library editions of Dickens in one volume (1911), in which we have his extended views on individual works – ‘Bleak House is not certainly Dickens's best book; but perhaps it is his best novel’ – and more of his sharp observations, such as: ‘[Dickens] did not dislike this or that argument for oppression; he disliked oppression. He disliked a certain look on the face of a man when he looks down on another man.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Charles Dickens in Context , pp. 51 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011