Re: Your Life

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Thu, 31 Jul 1997 12:04:22 -0100 

My dear Liana,

  It is good of you to say you have enjoyed my book "Great Expectations."
  You ask many questions about my younger days.  There were certainly times
when, I think I can fairly say, my lot was hard, times when I saw no escape
from circumstances repugnant to me.  My father was released, at least from
the pressure of debt, by his discharge from the Marshalsea, under the
provisions of the Insolven Debtors' Act.  It was some months, however,
before I was released from my ordeal in Warren's Blacking Warehouse.  At
last, however, I was released, and I went back to school for a couple of
years, before starting work in a lawyer's office.
  Like most boys, I found that my favourite book at one time was not my
favourite book at another.  The old favourites, generally speaking, were top
favourites when I was re-reading them.  There were several: Defoe's
"Robinson Crusoe," for instance, and Fielding's "Tom Jones."  But there was
one, I suppose, which I went back to with particular pleasure, and which has
a special lodging in my fancy still.  I mean "The Arabian Nights."
  In 1836 I married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth,
distinguished music critic and historian, editor of the "Evening Chronicle,"
for which I worked as a reporter, and which had published some of my stories
too.  Alas, Catherine and I proved to be a couple who should not have
married, and in 1858 we separated.  There was no divorce, and I provided for
her every comfort.  Before our ways parted, we had ten children.
  Turning to less corporeal children, I can tell you I have often been
quoted as saying that my favourite child was David Copperfield.  That,
indeed, was my book to which I returned with most pleasure. More of me was
in it than in any other.
  You ask what made me pick the characteristics of my characters.  I'm not
sure I can answer that, because your question fails to reflect the way I
allowed my imagination to work.  My creatures were not for the most part
constructed.  They declared themselves to me.  Sometimes they did things and
said things I would rather they hadn't.  To be sure, I would sometimes
cogitate and devise a habit or a trick of speech for one of my characters,
but that was not the act of creation.  The habit or trick had to be right
for the character.  It wouldn't stick if it wasn't.

Faithfully yours,



Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________

>Dear Mr. Dickens
>       Hello. I have been reading a peice of your literature, Great Expectations
> and I have found it interesting.  I also started reading Bleak House it is
>taking me a while to get through it.  I read that you had a very hard life as
>a young boy.  With your father in the Marshalsea Prison and you working full
>time putting labels on shoe polish bottles, you must have had a very a
>troubling childhood.  When your father finally got out of debt what did you
>do?  As a boy what was your favorite book? As a man? When you finally got
>married who did you marry and if you got divorced did you marry again?  I
>have heard that you had a lot of children, how many did you have? What was
>your favorite part of writing and what made you pick the charecteristics of
>your charecters? Thank you for  taking the time to read and answer my letter,
>it is appreciated.
>                       Liana
>
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author