Charles Dickens, página 19 de 133

Nadie podrá dejar de amar y compadecer a George Silverman una vez conozca su historia. Nadie podrá dejar de agradecerle a Ricardo Cavolo sus magníficos y singulares dibujos, que ilustran a la perfeccion el mundo y las emociones de esta fascinante novela corta, una de las menos conocidas pero mas bellas de su autor, el gran novelista britanico del siglo XIX.George Silverman es niño y pobre, y siempre tiene hambre; ha pasado su corta existencia en un lugubre sotano; sus padres acaban de morir No puede ser mas triste el arranque de esta narracion, en la que el mismo, ya anciano, nos contara sus peripecias.Pero, por fin, va a salir al exterior; a una vida mas pura, como insinua su nuevo tutor, el Hermano Hawkyard, uno de esos personajes dickensianos tan inolvidables como retorcidos.En el exterior conocera otras formas de desconsuelo, pero tambien el amor y Solo hay que abrir ya este libro, y comenzar a leer, para conocerlo todo acerca de George Silverman."Uno de mis relatos favoritos de todos los tiempos." George Orwell

The issue of a new edition of Martin Chuzzlewit tempts us to devote a few words to the consideration of what we venture to think the most brilliant and entertaining of all the works of Mr. Dickens. This new edition is in a very convenient form, and is clearly and handsomely printed; it contains, moreover, the illustrations published in the original issue, and therefore those happy young people to whom Martin Chuzzlewit is unknown may enjoy its perusal with every advantage. We do not pretend to have any observations to offer on so familiar a work that can have much novelty for the established admirers of Mr. Dickens. There are especially three parts of Martin Chuzzlewit that have thus been incorporated into the body of English thought. There is the history and character of Mr. Pecksniff; there is the figure, the habits, and the friend of Mrs. Gamp; and there is the description of all that Martin did and saw in America. Whenever an oily and plausible man is to be pointed out, he is at once called a Pecksniff. Whenever an unknown authority is quoted against us, we exclaim " Mrs. Harris;" and the press of New York, and the speeches of American statesmen, forbid us ever to forget the " Pogram Defiance" and the proceedings of the Water-toast Association. These are the great contributions of Martin Chuzzlewit to the resources of the English language, and to the completeness of English literature.

"Sketches By Boz" is a collection of 56 sketches concerning London scenes and inhabitants. Most of the stories, that are divided into four sections, are portraits, but there are also some purely fict

The story opens with the death of Mrs. Dombey, who has left her husband the proud possessor of a baby son and heir. He neglects his daughter Florence and loves Paul, in whom all his ambitions and worldly hopes are centred; but the boy dies. Mr. Dombey marries a beautiful woman, who is as cold and proud as he, and who has sold herself to him to escape from a designing mother. She grows fond of Florence, and this friendship is so displeasing to Mr. Dombey that he tries to humble her by remonstrating through Mr. Carker, his business manager and friend. This crafty villain, realizing his power, goads her beyond endurance, and she demands a separation from Mr. Dombey, but is refused. After an angry interview, she determines upon a bold stroke and disgraces her husband by pretending to elope with Carker to France, where she meets him once, shames and defies him and escapes. Mr. Dombey, after spurning Florence, whom he considers the cause of his trouble, follows Carker in hot haste. They encounter each other without warning at a railway station, and as Carker is crossing the tracks he falls and is instantly killed by an express train. Florence seeks refuge with an old sea-captain whom her little brother, Paul, has been fond of, marries Walter Gay, the friend of her childhood, and they go to sea. After the failure of Dombey and Son, when Mr. Dombeys pride is humbled and he is left desolate, Florence returns and takes care of him. The characters in the book not immediately concerned in the plot, but famous for their peculiar qualities, are Captain Cuttle, Florences kind protector, who has a nautical manner of expression ; Sol Gills, Walters uncle; Mr.

Barnaby Rudge was Dickenss fifth novel, and was published in 1841. The plot is extremely intricate. Barnaby is a poor half-witted lad, living in London toward the close of the eighteenth century, with his mother and his raven Grip. His father had been the steward of a country gentleman named Haredale, who was found murdered in his bed, while both his steward and his gardener had disappeared. The body of the steward, recognizable only by the clothes, is presently found in a pond. Barnaby is born the day after the double murder. Affectionate and usually docile, credulous and full of fantastic imaginings, a simpleton but faithful, he grows up to be liked and trusted. His mother having fled to London to escape a mysterious blackmailer, he becomes involved in the famous "No Popery" riots of Lord George Gordon in 1780, and is within an ace of perishing on the scaffold. The blackmailer, Mr. Haredale the brother and Emma the daughter of the murdered man, Emmas lover Edward Chester, and his father, are the chief figures of the nominal plot; but the real interest is not with them but with the side characters and the episodes. Some of the most whimsical and amusing of Dickenss character-studies appear in the pages of the novel; while the whole episode of the gathering and march of the mob, and the storming of Newgate, is surpassed in dramatic intensity by no passage in modern fiction, unless it is by Dickenss own treatment of the French Revolution in the Tale of Two Cities.

Englische Literatur in Reclams Roter Reihe: das ist der englische Originaltext ungekurzt und unbearbeitet mit Worterklarungen am Fu jeder Seite, Nachwort und Literaturhinweisen.In seinem zweiten und bekanntesten Roman erzahlt Dickens, angeregt durch die neuen Armengesetze von 1834, die er scharf attackierte, von den dunklen Schatten, die auf den Glanz der viktorianischen Zeit fallen und mit dem industriellen Aufschwung einhergehen: Armut, Kriminalitat, Prostitution, die Verelendung breiter Gesellschaftsschichten.In der Roten Reihe erscheint der Roman, der im Original mehr als 600 Seiten umfasst, in einer fur den Englischunterricht gekurzten Version.Englische Lekture. Inhaltliche Stichworte: Straenkinder · Armut · GesellschaftskritikE-Book mit Seitenzahlung der gedruckten Ausgabe: Buch und E-Book konnen parallel benutzt werden.

A collection of Dickens books would not be complete without this historical work for children which sometimes reads more like a fairytale. In his own very special writing the author runs the child through centuries and centuries of English history. A book that has been in the curricula of English schools until the end of World War II.

Der beliebte Jugendklassiker von Charles Dickens! Im England der Industrialisierung wird David Copperfield geboren. Sein Leben wird vom Tag seiner Geburt aufgezeichnet - leidvoll, ergreifend, spannend, liebevoll, turbulent und bewegend. Eine Vielzahl an Nebenpersonen begleiten David Copperfield durch seine Kindheit und Jugendjahre ... diese Nebenpersonen gehoren zur Faszination des Buches genau so wie der Charakter des Protagonisten und entfuhren den Leser in ihre spannende, interessante und turbulente Welt.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was Charles Dickens last novel and remained - unfortunately - unfinished. There was a lot of discussion about what Dickens could have had in his mind as solution for the plot. Was Mr. Jasper really a murderer? What was the real mystery of Edwin Droods death? We will never know, but this novel will surely make your mind reel after you read it to the ... end?

Since the voyage of Columbus in search of the New World, and of Raleigh in quest of El Dorado, no visit to America has excited so much interest and conjecture as that of the author of "Oliver Twist." . . . In the mean time the book, however disconcerting to those persons who had looked for something quite different, will bring no disappointment to such as can be luxuriously content with good sense, good feeling, good fun, and good writing. The information, with few exceptions, might be gained much more advantageously from the map and gazetteer. The perusal of them has served chiefly to lower our estimate of the man, and to fill us with contempt for such a compound of egotism, coxcombry, and cockneyism. . . . We have never read a book, professing to give an account of any country, which, in respect to its natural features, its towns and cities, its manners and customs, its social, civil, and religious institutionsin short, in respect to everything about which the reader wishes to receive information, or at least to ascertain the opinions of the author, is so profoundly silent as the book before us.

Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the one novel of Dickens that abounds neither in pathetic, grewsome, nor dramatic passages. It is pure fun from beginning to end, with a laugh on every page. It was published in 1836, and aided by the clever illustrations of Hablot Brown, or "Phiz," it attained immediate success and laid the foundations of Dickenss fame. The types illustrated are caricatures, but nevertheless they are types: Mr. Pickwick, the genial, unsophisticated founder of the club; and that masterly array of ludicrous individuals drawn from all classes high and low. Although the whole book is exaggerated comedy, there is no other that has furnished more characters universally known, or given to common English speech more current phrases. Many sayings and events are still in the "Pickwickian sense"; Sam Weller and his admirable father are still quoted; Mrs. Leo Hunter is still a feature in social life; Bardell trials occur occasionally; and there are many clubs as wise as Pickwicks.

The Pictures from Italy are excellent in themselves and excellent as a foil to the American Notes. Here we have none of that air of giving a decision like a judge or sending in a report like an inspector; here we have only glimpses, light and even fantastic glimpses, of a world that is really alien to Dickens. It is so alien that he can almost entirely enjoy it. For no man can entirely enjoy that which he loves; contentment is always unpatriotic. The difference can indeed be put with approximate perfection in one phrase. In Italy he was on a holiday; in America he was on a tour. But indeed Dickens himself has quite sufficiently conveyed the difference in the two phrases that he did actually use for the titles of the two books. Dickens often told unconscious truths, especially in small matters. The American Notes really are notes, like the notes of a student or a professional witness. The Pictures from Italy are only pictures from Italy, like the miscellaneous pictures that all tourists bring from Italy.

A whole generation, on either side of the Atlantic, used to fall sobbing at the name of Little Nell, which will hardly bring tears to the eyes of any one now, though it is still apparent that the child was imagined with real feelings, and her sad little melodrama was staged with sympathetic skill. When all is said against the lapses of taste and truth, the notion of the young girl wandering up and down the country with her demented grandfather, and meeting good and evil fortune with the same devotion, till death overtakes her, is something that must always touch the heart. It is preposterously overdone, yes, and the author himself falls into pages of hysterical rhythm, which once moved people, when he ought to have been writing plain, straight prose; yet there is in all a sense of the divinity in common and humble lives, which is the most precious quality of literature, as it is almost the rarest, and it is this which moves and consoles. It is this quality in Dickens which Tolstoy prizes and accepts as proof of his great art, and which the true critic must always set above any effect of literary mastery. "The Old Curiosity Shop" makes strong appeal to a youthful imagination, and contains little that is beyond its scope. Dickenss sentiment, however it may distress the mature mind of our later day, is not unwholesome, and, at all events in this story, addresses itself naturally enough to feelings unsubdued by criticism. His quality of picturesqueness is here seen at its best, with little or nothing of that melodrama which makes the alloy of "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Oliver Twist" to speak only of the early books.

The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of Dickenss memories rather than of his literary purposes; but it is due to him to say that memory is often more startling in him than prophecy in anybody else. They have the character which belongs to all his vivid incidental writing: that they attach themselves always to some text which is a fact rather than an idea. He was one of those sons of Eve who are fonder of the Tree of Life than of the Tree of Knowledgeeven of the knowledge of good and of evil. He was in this profoundest sense a_r_e_al_i_s_t. Critics have talked of an artist with his eye on the object. Dickens as an essayist always had his eye on an object before he had the faintest notion of a subject. All these works of his can best be considered as letters; they are notes of personal travel, scribbles in a diary about this or that that really happened. But Dickens was one of the few men who have the two talents that are the whole of literatureand have them both together.

Ed.: P. Lorain Tr.: P. Grolier

Illus.: F. H. Townsend