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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

“It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.”

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Charles Dickens

About having a book
Letter to Mrs. Richard Watson (7 December 1857)

“Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 2

“(Carmine Crocco) In such a crowd, so numerous and composed of such heterogeneous elements, it might have appeared almost absurd to look for discipline; but perfect discipline there was, for, whatever his other qualities might be, Crocco most undoubtedly was a "ruler of men". His word in that band was law, and the punishment of disaffection was death.”

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Charles Dickens

All the year round, Vol.15 (1876), p. 281

“That vague kind of penitence which holidays awaken next morning.”

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Charles Dickens livre The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 40

“You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy!… O running stream of sparkling joy To be a soaring human boy!”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 19

“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

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Charles Dickens

Hunted Down http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hntdn10.txt (1859)

“Minerva House … was "a finishing establishment for young ladies," where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.”

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Charles Dickens livre Sketches by Boz

Tales, Ch. 3 : Sentiment
Sketches by Boz (1836-1837)

“She's the ornament of her sex.”

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Charles Dickens livre The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 5

“in a private letter to letter to Emile de la Rue on 23 October 1857”

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Charles Dickens

You know faces, when they are not brown; you know common experiences when they are not under turbans; Look at the dogs - low, treacherous, merderous, tigerous villians
I wish I were Commander in Chief over there ! I would address that Oriental character which must be powerfully spoken to, in something like the following placard, which should be vigorously translated into all native dialects, “I, The Inimitable, holding this office of mine, and firmly believing that I hold it by the permission of Heaven and not by the appointment of Satan, have the honor to inform you Hindoo gentry that it is my intention, with all possible avoidance of unnecessary cruelty and with all merciful swiftness of execution, to exterminate the Race from the face of the earth, which disfigured the earth with the late abominable atrocities"

“Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.”

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Charles Dickens livre The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 34

“In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 7

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

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Charles Dickens livre Master Humphrey's Clock

Master Humphrey's Clock, (1840) Vol. 1

“Well, every one for himself, and Providence for us all--as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens.”

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Charles Dickens

Charles Reade, A Simpleton (1873)
Misattributed

“He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 14

“My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of their troubles.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Chapter 41

“If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

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

“Not to put too fine a point upon it.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 11, 19, 22

“The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement… I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers… I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay”

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Charles Dickens

American Notes online at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/675/pg675.html

“O let us love our occupations,
Bless the squire and his relations,
Live upon our daily rations,
And always know our proper stations.”

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Charles Dickens

The Chimes http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/english/1800-1899/dickens-chimes-379.txt, Second Quarter (1844)

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 28

“[T]he evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.”

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Charles Dickens livre Bleak House

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

“I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre a night or two before and she reminded me of the faces rising out of the witches' cauldron.”

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Charles Dickens livre Les Grandes Espérances

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 17; Pip describes Molly, Mr. Jaggers' housekeeper

“The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene.  There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.”

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Charles Dickens livre Sketches by Boz

Source: Sketches by Boz (1836-1837), Ch. 1 : The Streets — Morning

“Cows are my passion.”

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Charles Dickens livre Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 21

“She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”

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Charles Dickens livre David Copperfield

Source: David Copperfield

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