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Charles John Huffam Dickens , né à Landport, près de Portsmouth, dans le Hampshire, comté de la côte sud de l'Angleterre, le 7 février 1812 et mort à Gad's Hill Place à Higham dans le Kent, le 9 juin 1870 , est considéré comme le plus grand romancier de l'époque victorienne. Dès ses premiers écrits, il est devenu immensément célèbre, sa popularité ne cessant de croître au fil de ses publications.

L'expérience marquante de son enfance, que certains considèrent comme la clef de son génie, a été, peu avant l'incarcération de son père pour dettes à la Marshalsea, son embauche à douze ans chez Warren où il a collé des étiquettes sur des pots de cirage pendant plus d'une année. Bien qu'il soit retourné presque trois ans à l'école, son éducation est restée sommaire et sa grande culture est essentiellement due à ses efforts personnels.

Il a fondé et publié plusieurs hebdomadaires, composé quinze romans majeurs, cinq livres de moindre envergure , des centaines de nouvelles et d'articles portant sur des sujets littéraires ou de société. Sa passion pour le théâtre l'a poussé à écrire et mettre en scène des pièces, jouer la comédie et faire des lectures publiques de ses œuvres qui, lors de tournées souvent harassantes, sont vite devenues extrêmement populaires en Grande-Bretagne et aux États-Unis.

Charles Dickens a été un infatigable défenseur du droit des enfants, de l'éducation pour tous, de la condition féminine et de nombreuses autres causes, dont celle des prostituées.

Il est apprécié pour son humour, sa satire des mœurs et des caractères. Ses œuvres ont presque toutes été publiées en feuilletons hebdomadaires ou mensuels, genre inauguré par lui-même en 1836 : ce format est contraignant mais il permet de réagir rapidement, quitte à modifier l'action et les personnages en cours de route. Les intrigues sont soignées et s'enrichissent souvent d'événements contemporains, même si l'histoire se déroule antérieurement.

Publié en 1843, Un chant de Noël a connu un vaste retentissement international, et l'ensemble de son œuvre a été loué par des écrivains de renom, comme William Makepeace Thackeray, Léon Tolstoï, Gilbert Keith Chesterton ou George Orwell, pour son réalisme, son esprit comique, son art de la caractérisation et l'acuité de sa satire. Certains, cependant, comme Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde ou Henry James, lui ont reproché de manquer de régularité dans le style, de privilégier la veine sentimentale et de se contenter d'analyses psychologiques superficielles.

Dickens a été traduit en de nombreuses langues, avec son aval pour les premières versions françaises. Son œuvre, constamment rééditée, connaît toujours de nombreuses adaptations au théâtre, au cinéma, au music-hall, à la radio et à la télévision. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. février 1812 – 9. juin 1870
Charles Dickens photo
Charles Dickens: 118   citations 1   J'aime

Charles Dickens Citations

“Ne fais pas de questions, et on ne te dira pas de mensonges.”

Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Les Grandes Espérances ('), 1860-1861

mensonge , Question

“La difficulté d'écrire l'anglais m'est extrêmement ennuyeuse. Ah, mon Dieu! si l'on pouvait toujours écrire cette belle langue de France!”

Charles Dickens
Dieu

Charles Dickens: Citations en anglais

“Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!”

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Charles Dickens livre Hard Times

Bk. II, Ch. 4
Hard Times (1854)

“Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 4

“…vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 48

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together…”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 27

“It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 6

“Compeyson's business was the swindling, hand writing forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart than a iron file he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 42

“He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 2

“He is not, as he forcibly remarks, ‘one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one side of a barge stark–naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat–pocket:’ neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the careless, good–for–nothing, happy fellows, who float, cork–like, on the surface, for the world to play at hockey with: knocked here, and there, and everywhere: now to the right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with the stream buoyantly and merrily along.”

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Charles Dickens livre Sketches by Boz

Our Parish, Ch. 5 : The Broker’s Man
Sketches by Boz (1836-1837)

“Money and goods are certainly the best of references.”

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Charles Dickens livre Our Mutual Friend

Bk. I, Ch. 4
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

“Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous; and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered, by all true believers, certain of going there: though it would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at.”

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Charles Dickens livre American Notes

American Notes (1842), Ch. 3

“Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular." I had never heard of such a thing. "A fog, miss," said the young gentleman. "Oh, indeed!”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

said I.
Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 3

“We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered and we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the people bless him. I never lie down at night, but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow creature in the time of need. Is not this to be rich?”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 67

“Time was," he said, "when it was well to watch even your rising little star, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow you if needful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 46

“It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 27

“I don't care whether I am a Minx or a Sphinx.”

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Charles Dickens livre Our Mutual Friend

Bk. II, Ch. 8
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

“The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 23

“My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 24

“I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash–house copper with the lid on.”

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Charles Dickens livre Sketches by Boz

Our Parish, Ch. 5 : The Broker’s Man
Sketches by Boz (1836-1837)

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

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Charles Dickens

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

“I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence.”

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Charles Dickens livre Little Dorrit

Bk. I, Ch. 2
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

“I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her face. "The sea Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 8

“That's the state to live and die in!…R-r-rich!”

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Charles Dickens livre Our Mutual Friend

Bk. III, Ch. 5
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

“Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 27

“If any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford.”

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Charles Dickens

Letter to Thomas Beard (11 January 1835), in Madeline House, et al., The Letters of Charles Dickens (1965), p. 53

“In love of home, the love of country has its rise.”

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Charles Dickens livre The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 38

“I wish I were Commander in Chief of India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement (not in the least regarding them as if they lived in the Strand, London, or at Camden Town), should be to proclaim to them in their language, that I considered my Holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, which all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”

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Charles Dickens

in a private letter to Baronness Burdett-Coutts on 4 October 1857

“Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine.”

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Charles Dickens

The Signal-Man http://www.charles-dickens.org/three-ghost-stories-the-signal-man/ebook-page-04.asp (1866)

“No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”

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Charles Dickens livre Our Mutual Friend

Bk. III, Ch. 9
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

“"Papa is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company — on entering a room, for instance — Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.”

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Charles Dickens livre Little Dorrit

Bk. II, Ch. 5
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)

“There is a wisdom of the Head, and … there is a wisdom of the Heart.”

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Charles Dickens livre Hard Times

Bk. III, Ch. 1
Hard Times (1854)

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