Results 61 - 80 of 423 Article Index

Dickens probably wrote or heavily rewrote the following portions of 'Cain in the Fields': from 'This was the young' to 'pretended embrace' (p. 147); from 'There is no escape' to 'learn it!' (p. 148); from 'But, perhaps the most striking' to 'two thieves' (p. 149).
Dickens may also have rewritten or added to the following sections: the opening paragraph; from 'Twelve years have passed' (p. 151) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have interpolated phrases into passages primarily by Horne (for example, the ironic asides in the first two-thirds of the paragraph beginning 'Of domestic poisonings,' p. 148).
The psychology and punishment of murderers - the subject of this article - had fascinated Dickens from his earliest days. Sketches by Boz (1836), Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), and Oliver Twist (1837-1839) - as well as many of his later novels - demonstrate this fascination. His periodicals reflect the same interest. In Household Words, in 'The Finishing Schoolmaster' (17 May 1851) - to cite only one example - he demonstrated how the very office of hangman exerted a baleful, brutalizing effect. Dozens of essays took up similar and allied matters. One of those allied matters - again dealt with in the article below - was the practice of holding executions in public, a practice Dickens vehemently opposed. In 1846, in five letters to the Daily News, and in 1849, in two letters to the Times, Dickens argued brilliantly against capital punishment and public executions. Here he continues that campaign.
Public executions were finally abolished in 1868.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

This article relates closely to Dickens's long-standing concern with the issue of capital punishment. He had contributed to a powerful series of letters advocating total abolition of the death penalty to the Daily News (23 February–16 March 1846). The previous year he had offered to write an article on capital punishment for the Edinburgh Review, but never did so (see Pilgrim, Vol. IV, pp. 340–41). By the time of his two 1849 letters to The Times deploring the disgusting scenes at the Mannings' execution (Pilgrim, Vol. V, pp. 644–45 and 651), he had come to believe that total abolition was not a practical possibility and concentrated on arguing for the abolition of public executions. For the texts of the five Daily News letters, see D. Paroissien (ed.), Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (1985), pp. 213–55; for an excellent detailed discussion of them, and Dickens's attitude to capital punishment generally, see Philip Collins, Dickens and Crime (1962), Ch. 10.

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Dickens probably wrote the following portions of 'The Wind and the Rain': from 'We do not defend' to 'in such weather' (p. 217); from 'It is raining still' (p. 222) to the conclusion.
Dickens may also have added to the following passages: from the opening to 'out of a wet day' (p. 217); from 'It is raining now' to 'quotation summarily' (p. 217); from 'In equalising temperature' (p. 220) to ''Nature leading me'' (p. 221).

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'Epsom': from 'On that great occasion' (p. 244) to the conclusion.
Dickens may also have added briefly to the following passage: from the opening to 'names in the country' (p. 241).
In addition, Dickens seems to have retouched sections primarily by Wills.
For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office.'
'Epsom' states that Dickens or Wills (or both) visited Epsom on Monday, 19 May; if Dickens was there Monday, he returned to London - for he was in town on the 20th and 21st - and then (according to letters of 21 May) went down again on Wednesday the 21st, Derby Day, returning that evening. Later that night, he wrote to Edward Bulwer Lytton: 'I have just come home from the Derby. I never saw such a crowd as on the road coming home.' On 29 May, in a letter to Wills, Dickens wrote, probably about 'Epsom': 'I think we shall now have a very good article. I have two requests to make in connexion with the enclosed copy. First, that you will severely reprove the White-friars people [the printers of Household Words] in my name, for having the negligence to send me yesterday the uncorrected proof after all. Secondly that you will very carefully correct the proof of the new matter, and, if you have any doubt, refer to the manuscript.' Later in the same letter, he added: 'I have gone to Epsom very freshly.'
The Derby and the journey to and from Epsom was a familiar set piece of Victorian genre writing, painting, and sketching.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'The Tresses of the Day Star': the concluding paragraph.
Dickens may also have retouched the following passages: from the opening to 'history is instructive' (p. 289); from 'How shall we attempt' to 'mansion of the sun' (p. 290).
In addition, Dickens seems to have cut and condensed the article very heavily.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens probably wrote a substantial share of the 'Little Exhibition' portions of 'The Great Exhibition and the Little One.' His hand seems most evident in the following passages: from 'As it is impossible' (p. 357) to 'Amen' (p. 358); the paragraph beginning 'Compare these' (p. 358); the paragraph beginning 'In the Little Exhibition' (p. 359); from 'In China, there are' (p. 360) to the conclusion.
Dickens seems also to have emended other passages.
Three years earlier (24 June 1848), in the Examiner, Dickens propounded the superiority of the West to the East in a paper entitled 'The Chinese Junk,' a paper which described the exotic Chinese craft which had just come round the world to be put on display in London, and a paper which incorporated many of the instances and images developed below. In 1848 there was no Great Exhibition to use as a condensed antithesis of the 'Little Exhibition' (Dickens' name for the Chinese Gallery in Hyde Park Place and the Chinese junk at Temple Stairs), but in both essays the 'Stoppage' of the East is contrasted with the 'Progress' of the West (the terms are Dickens', see p. 360) - a view of East and West that Dickens, along with most of his contemporaries, regarded as self-evident.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

George Bradshaw first published his Railway Guide in 1839; from 1841 it was published as Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide (see Percy Fitzgerald, The Story of Bradshaw's Guide [1890]). Dickens seems to have had recurrent problems with it: in October 1851 he writes in a letter making an appointment of 'the intense folly of the unmeaning Bradshaw' (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 502). In writing this satirical piece he seems to have used the 1851 May issue in which Ware is erroneously indexed as being on p. 6 (misprint for 36).

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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens had been taking his family for a summer holiday to Broadstairs, on the east coast of Kent, every year since 1837 apart from 1844 and 1846. Originally a small fishing village, Broadstairs was made fashionable by the Duchess of Kent, who 'visited it every summer for years, coming in with the strawberries and going out with the blackberries' (The Illustrated Times, 29 August 1857, p. 154). When she tired of it, The Illustrated Times added, 'Mr Dickens took it up and fondled it for a time'.

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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

'I don't know what to write about', Dickens wrote to Wills on 10 August 'in the absence of your Paris-trip notes [see Headnote to 'A Flight', HW, Vol. III, 30 August 1851], but I think of a paper on "Whole Hogs" – Peace Society, Temperance Do, [i.e. ditto] and Vegetarians – all of whom have lately been making stupendous fools of themselves' (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 457). All three Societies had featured prominently in The Times during the previous two or three weeks. On 5 August the paper satirically reported the National Temperance Society's 'Great Teetotal Demonstration' at Exeter Hall the previous day. George Cruikshank and the American pacifist Elihu Burritt were among those on the platform, and the committee's address stressed that 'nothing short of total abstinence could destroy their fearful foe'. There were also some dismal attempts at humour. 

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Dickens first travelled to Paris by the South Eastern Railway's new 'Double Special Express Service' in 1850, travelling overnight from London Bridge Station on 22/23 June and arriving in Paris at 8.45 a.m. He wrote to Forster: 'The twelve hours' journey here is astounding – marvellously done, except in the means of refreshment, which are absolutely none' (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 118). He went again (also overnight) on 10/11 February 1851 on HW business. He draws on memories of these journeys to convey what he later called, still in relation to this particular train service, 'that queer sensation born of quick travelling' (Pilgrim, Vol. VII, p. 464), but also, it seems, on those 'Paris-trip notes' of Will's (Wills had made a lightning visit to Paris on 28/30 July) that he said he was waiting for on 10 August.

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Dickens probably wrote the following portions of 'One Man in a Dockyard': from the opening to 'any individual' (p. 554); the concluding paragraph.
Dickens may also have contributed to the following passages: from 'I was now' (p. 554) to 'an ordinary occurrence' (p. 555); from 'But the power' to 'reason and utility' (p. 556).
In addition, Dickens seems to have gone over Horne's contribution with considerable care.
Concerning this essay, Dickens wrote to Wills, on 30 July 1851:

The notion I think of trying with Horne is a kind of adaptation of an old idea l once had (when I was making my name) of a fanciful and picturesque Beauties of England and Wales. For I never look at the grimgriffinhoof 'Beauties' without thinking what might be done. I have not told Horne what my general idea is - I have a notion that it might be made a tremendous card for us - but I have proposed to him to come down with me to Chatham after the next play (on my way back) and take certain bits of the Dockyard and fortifications. Don't you think a Series of Places, well chosen, and described well, with their peculiarities and popularities thoroughly seized, would be a very promising Series? And one that people would be particularly likely to identify with me? ...
If I found the Chatham paper come out well, I would cast about for a way of making a splash with it, as a new branch of the H. W. [Household Words] Tree.

The series, as outlined, was never developed, but many years later, in 'Chatham Dockyard' ('The Uncommercial Traveller' [xxv], All the Year Round, 29 August 1863), Dickens again took in 'bits of the Dockyard and fortifications,' now as the Uncommercial Traveller. 'Chatham Dockyard' (reprinted in The Uncommercial Traveller, Second Series [1868]), echoes and amplifies the tone, the detail, and even the strategy of Dickens' contribution to 'One Man in a Dockyard.'
The division of labor in 'One Man in a Dockyard' was quickly settled. In 'Portraits and Memoirs' (Macmillan's Magazine, XXII [1870], 371) Horne described how he and Dickens went down to Chatham early one morning in order to have an entire day to gather material for the dockyard article. On arriving in Chatham, they ordered their evening meal, and then discussed their plans:

'Now,' said Mr. Dickens, 'this article will naturally divide itself into two parts, which we can afterwards dovetail together, viz. the works of the dockyard, and the fortifications and country scenery round about. Which will you take?' I at once replied, that the works of the dockyard seemed to me the most promising. He smiled, and said, 'Then we'll meet here again [at the place in Chatham where they had ordered dinner] at a quarter to five. I'm glad you make that choice, for this is a sort of native place of mine. I was a school-boy here, and have juvenile memories and associations all round the country outskirts.' The kindness and good nature, even more than the readiness for any kind of work, need no comment, How few literary men - how very few - would have suppressed a strong personal feeling on such an occasion, before the choice was made.

Dickens lived in the Chatham-Rochester region for five and a half crucial childhood years (1817-1823). During this period his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office attached to the Chatham Dockyard. Much later, after purchasing Gad's Hill Place in 1856, Dickens again made the Chatham-Rochester region his home.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'Shakspeare and Newgate': from the beginning to 'all possible audiences' (p. 25).
Dickens may also have written or extensively rewritten much of the following section: from 'Seven or eight years' (p. 25) to 'listening constables' (p. 26).
The idea propounded in the opening of this essay - that art can help make life bearable, and that the alternative to this saving grace is violence and depravity - was a notion that Dickens held to be profoundly true and that he wove into many of his writings.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.