Charles Dickens

Which other authors do you enjoy? Discuss them here.
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by dolly »

Bleak house was also one of my favourite Dickens´stories.
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by Dick Kirrin »

Perhaps I should out myself as another Dickens fan. Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations and not to forget his ghost story The Signalman. All well worth reading and all have more to them than meets the eye. Oliver Twist is not just a thrilling as well as gripping mixture between crime novel and adventure story, but a plea for social reform, just to mention one.
BTW, I very much doubt that the setting for the signalman is a coincidence. A ghost story interfering with the then most modern means of transport, there is a certain qualtity to it.
They say that Dickens was one of the inventors of the modern crime novel and they won't hear any protest from me.
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by chloe1 »

Great Expectations is one of my favourite books ever!

I also love Thomas Hardy:)
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by Eddie Muir »

I am a great admirer of both Dickens and Hardy, as well as D.H. Lawrence (which I've mentioned on other threads). :D

Great Expectations is definitely my favourite Dickens novel and it's a toss up between Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure for best-loved Hardy novel.
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by Yak »

I must do a Hardy reread soon .. I've read most of his books at one time or another but am hard pressed to remember many of them. I do remember Jude as being particularly depressing though, even given how depressing Hardy normally is :D
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Re: Dickens fans?

Post by Moonraker »

This is a fantastic Dickens website.
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Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by zaidi »

Charles dickens is an emotional sad writer who's books are Quite Famous like David Copperfield,Great Expectations and Oliver Twist and many other his writing shows the cruelty in the times of Queen Victoria but as we compare them Charles Dickens took the affect of his time he neither took his life too positive but relieved himself by putting his feelings into his writing but Enid took everything positive and did not show the depression problems and affect of those into her writing she was a versatile writer who would not always be happy neither sad she showed tragedies of people like in Hollow tree but a happy Ending or a happy start happy ending like famous five i would not say Charles was not a worth his writing is gold but Enid's is above the sky your experience
is a matter of fact which you put in your writing i would simply say Charles ' writing affected the society he is a great writer but he makes some of his writing seem boring but Enid entertains from each word.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Fiona1986 »

You raise some interesting points, Zaidi. I haven't read any Charles Dickens books, but (to me) they certainly don't seem to gloss over the hardships of life.

Enid did include some hard-times for her characters but as you say they always ended happily - and that's something I like.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Timmylover »

Charles Dickens certainly had a great social conscience and highlighted many social ills and injustices in his writings. He also had a brilliant talent for writing humorous prose, probably more so than any other great writer. It's quite fruitless to compare Charles Dickens with Enid Blyton. Their writings are at opposite poles and each wrote for a different readership. Why not compare Enid Blyton with another children's author? To begin to compare her with Dickens is both inappropriate and futile.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Zaidi wrote:Charles dickens is an emotional sad writer who's books are Quite Famous like David Copperfield,Great Expectations and Oliver Twist and many other his writing shows the cruelty in the times of Queen Victoria but as we compare them Charles Dickens took the affect of his time he neither took his life too positive but relieved himself by putting his feelings into his writing but Enid took everything positive and did not show the depression problems and affect of those into her writing...

Timmylover wrote:It's quite fruitless to compare Charles Dickens with Enid Blyton. Their writings are at opposite polls and each wrote for a different readership. Why not compare Enid Blyton with another children's author? To begin to compare her with Dickens is both inappropriate and futile.
Enid Blyton herself made a comparison, writing in a letter to psychologist Peter McKellar in 1953 that she believed she was like Charles Dickens (and several other writers) in that she had such easy access to her "under-mind", i.e. when writing a story she didn't have to stop and think hard about what to write. Rather, the narrative flashed into her mind so freely and fluently that her typing was barely fast enough to keep up with it. She was drawing effortlessly and almost unconsciously, or so it seemed, on all the information, experiences and feelings she had stored in her mind during her life. She had "let them simmer there, forgotten", and they would suddenly rise to the surface when needed. Enid wrote to Peter McKellar:

"...it is only when I write imaginative stuff that I write in the ways I have described. I think that such prolific writers as Dickens were probably the same - and Homer's intensely real flashes of thought in his poems seem to me the same. They are so exactly right when they really are the products of one's under-mind, super-mind, other-mind, whatever you like to call it: one learns to recognise it in other writings - Shakespeare is full of it - superb! Christopher Fry has it. All these writers are different - but I am sure they are the same in one way - they draw from their under-mind easily and surely..."

Charles Dickens' style of writing is very different from Enid Blyton's in that it is richer; wordier; more self-consciously "literary". And Blyton's writing is neither as probing nor as sentimental. However, there are similarities in that they clearly enjoy playing with language and its sounds, making frequent use of puns, alliteration and onomatopoeia. Both have a marvellous ear for dialogue and rhythm, and a great sense of comic timing. They are fond of anthropomorphism (Enid Blyton's short story 'Connie's Curious Candle', where the candles have their own personalities, strikes me as particularly "Dickensian"). And both do appear to have revelled in happy endings although Dickens looks in detail at the kinds of cruelty and social deprivation that are only just touched on in Blyton (she was writing for children, as has been pointed out), and even his happiest endings are often entwined with pathos or tragedy.

I don't know whether you know this, Zaidi, but many of Dickens' novels were first serialised in magazines. The same applies to some of Blyton's books, which were first serialised in Sunny Stories and Enid Blyton's Magazine. Readers would write in, commenting on the stories as they were printed bit by bit, so Dickens and Blyton came to feel a strong connection with their readership. Both writers were aware that they were influential personalities and that their work had the potential to affect society in a positive way. In a letter to librarian Mr. S. C. Dedman in 1949, Enid Blyton wrote:

"I'm not out only to tell stories, much as I love this - I am out to inculcate decent thinking, loyalty, honesty, kindliness, and all the things that children should be taught. I was speaking to Mr. Basil Henriques the other day (the Juvenile Delinquents' Magistrate) and we both agreed that if only we could raise up just one generation of first-rate children, we needn't worry about the future! But oh, the difficulties of getting even one generation."

(The letters from which I've quoted are printed at the back of Barbara Stoney's Enid Blyton - the Biography).
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Timmylover »

So Enid Blyton compared herself with both Dickens and Homer. I doubt that either would have returned the compliment.

I perceive far more differences in their writings and concerns than similarities. Blyton's writings mainly deal with escapism, adventure, rebellion against a sometimes unfair adult world, developing morality, friendship and loyalty. Although her books have great appeal and enduring popularity, they do not have the substance of Dickens' works. Have any other great authors been influenced by Blyton's writing? I know of several pastiches but they are just that, and of inferior quality to Blyton's work. Dickens directly influenced, amongst others, Turgenev (who sometimes contributed to Household Words), Tolstoy, who wrote: "All his characters are my personal friends - I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them", and Dostoevsky. The latter was so influenced by Dickens that he almost recreated the death of Little Nell, including the accompanying sentimentality, in describing the death of Nelli Valkovsky in The Insulted and the Injured (1862). His stories Uncle's Dream and The Friend of the Family (1859) bore unmistakable similarities to The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield.

Dickens' obituary in The Times (1870) described him as "The greatest instructor of the Nineteenth Century". His biographer, Edgar Johnson, claims in Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (1977) that Dickens was: "Far more than a great entertainer, a great comic writer, he looks into the abyss. He is one of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art". As, unlike Blyton, Dickens was not writing for children, he addressed far more serious issues than she was able to. He pilloried the infamous Yorkshire boarding schools in Nicholas Nickleby, basing Wackford Squeers on the real character of William Shaw, headmaster of Bowes Academy. Dickens visited this establishment and spoke with Shaw and then made the public well aware of the nature of the place, and others like it, and the horrific treatment of the children who were sent there. He was deeply involved with people working towards alleviating the problems of poverty, ignorance, social inequality and child neglect and cruelty. He worked with Lord Shaftesbury and Angela Burdett Coutts, establishing, with the latter, a home "for the redemption of fallen women". He raised substantial funding for the children's hospital at Great Ormond Street and was widely known as a great philanthropist. He wrote, anonymously, in The Examiner, a weekly publication, drawing the publics' attention to child cruelty. He also campaigned against the injusticies of the legal system in, for example, Bleak House and the memorable Old Bailey scenes in A Tale of Two Cities, full of irony and grim humour.

Dickens also had an astonishing talent for inventing the most memorable names for his characters. In contrast, Blyton's lack of originality and repetition in naming her non-fantasy characters is very apparent.

Both Dickens and Blyton had less than perfect home lives. That is, however, the case with many writers. I think that any comparisons between Dickens and Blyton are mainly insubstantial, and I consider them to be a very strange and unlikely pair as subjects for comparison.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Timmylover wrote:Have any other great authors been influenced by Blyton's writing?
I seem to remember reading somewhere that William Golding's Lord of the Flies was influenced by the Adventurous Four and Famous Five books! :wink:
Timmylover wrote:He [Charles Dickens] was deeply involved with people working towards alleviating the problems of poverty, ignorance, social inequality and child neglect and cruelty. He worked with Lord Shaftesbury and Angela Burdett Coutts, establishing, with the latter, a home "for the redemption of fallen women". He raised substantial funding for the children's hospital at Great Ormond Street and was widely known as a great philanthropist. He wrote, anonymously, in The Examiner, a weekly publication, drawing the publics' attention to child cruelty. He also campaigned against the injusticies of the legal system in, for example, Bleak House and the memorable Old Bailey scenes in A Tale of Two Cities, full of irony and grim humour.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that Enid Blyton was a philanthropist or social reformer. However, she was certainly aware of her power to influence the children of her day - children who would soon become adults and make their mark on society. Through Enid Blyton's Magazine in the 1950s, Blyton emphasized the importance of doing one's bit and helping others, encouraging her young readers to raise money for the blind, those afflicted by cerebral palsy, pre-schoolers at a children's home, and sick/injured animals. Children rallied to her call and she praised their initiative, creativity, diligence and kindness, naming many enterprising readers in the pages of her magazine. Even earlier in her career she had connected with children and inspired them in a similar manner through Sunny Stories and Teachers World, urging them to raise money for hospitals and for various charities.

The Put-Em-Rights features a Tramping Preacher who aims to make a difference to society by getting children to form little bands who will work to help their communities. In Enid Blyton's Magazine, Enid's words frequently echoed those of the preacher when she wrote about readers who had formed clubs to raise money for the causes mentioned above, calling them her "army of children" or "band of children" and saying that they were "becoming quite a power in the land in the many good and kind things they do" and that they were helping her "in my own work of caring for homeless, blind or spastic children. Without such children I could not possibly do all the things I long to do." She talked of "her" work and "her" children with an almost Messianic zeal, suggesting that she took her position as "Queen of Storytellers" extremely seriously, regarding herself as a woman with a mission. Perhaps her feelings resembled those of her Tramping Preacher, who remarks, "I can't make a better world out of men and women. They're hard to change. But the children can make a better world if they start out right." In her letter to Mr. S. C. Dedman, Enid Blyton put the emphasis upon children - "...if only we could raise up just one generation of first-rate children, we needn't worry about the future!"

Although Blyton did not comment a great deal on politics, she did have her say (in articles and poems published in newspapers and magazines) on issues like capital punishment, working mothers, juvenile delinquency and violent films and comics. Her stand-alone book The Six Bad Boys was written with the aim of helping dysfunctional families, with Blyton this time reaching out not only to children but to adults as well: "Are you a child? Or are you a grown-up? It doesn't much matter, with this book. It is written for the whole family, and for anyone who has to do with children. It is written, as all stories are written, to entertain the reader - but it is written too to explain some of the wrong things there are in the world, and to help put them right." Barbara Stoney tells us that Enid had "made visits to juvenile courts, commenting afterwards on what she had seen and heard."

So, while I wouldn't say that Enid Blyton was out to reform society in quite the same way as Charles Dickens, I would say that she understood that children's characters were moulded partly by the stories they loved and that she came to realise that she was in a position, because of the unusually close contact she had with many of her readers, to use her role as storyteller to influence the next generation or two.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Daisy »

These last few posts have been very interesting and enlightening. I had read very little Dickens, having been put off in school at 11 by having to study David Copperfield, but the arguments put forward sound like the subject of a school exam question. "Compare and contrast the life and works of Dickens and Blyton." Thank you Deborah and Anita for your words. I think we have ended up with a nicely balanced view.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Daisy wrote:...the arguments put forward sound like the subject of a school exam question. "Compare and contrast the life and works of Dickens and Blyton."
Hope we got a good mark! :lol: :wink:
Daisy wrote:I had read very little Dickens, having been put off in school at 11 by having to study David Copperfield...
I too came to Dickens rather young, picking up a copy of Oliver Twist in the top year of junior school and finding it difficult to follow what was going on. But by my late teens I could really appreciate his works.
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Re: Charles Dickens compared with Enid Blyton

Post by Wolfgang »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:
Timmylover wrote:Have any other great authors been influenced by Blyton's writing?
I seem to remember reading somewhere that William Golding's Lord of the Flies was influenced by the Adventurous Four and Famous Five books! :wink:
Just wondering: did the same source mention a huge influence on TV shows like Lassie, Flipper or Black beauty? After all all those animals show a great intelligence and ways of communication with humans as did Timmy the dog and Kiki the parrot...
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