Section 1 of Chapter 2, "Dickens' Social Background" of E. D. H. Johnson's Charles Dickens: An Introduction to His Novels, which originally appeared three decades ago (1969) in the paperback Random House Study in Language and Literature Series. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the late author's family.
The original text has almost no notes. All links have been added by GPL. Page breaks in the paperback edition have been indicated within the text by [5/6] in order to permit readers to cite original page numbers.
"Them Confugion steamers," said Mrs. Gamp, shaking her umbrella again, "has done more to throw us out of our reg'lar work and bring ewents on at times when nobody counted on 'em (especially them screeching railroad ones), than all the other frights that ever was took. I have heerd of one young man, a guard upon a railway, only three years opened -- well does Mrs. Harris know him, which indeed he is her own relation by her sister's marriage with a master sawyer -- as is godfather at this present time to six-and-tuenty blessed little strangers, equally unexpected, and all on 'um named after the Ingeins as was the cause. Ugb!" said Mrs. Gamp, resuming her apostrophe, "one might easy know you was a man's invention, from your disregardlessness of the weakness of our naturs, so one might, you brute!" [Martin Chuzzlewit, chapter 40]
"Oh, you're a broth of a boy, ain't you?" returned Miss Mowcher, shaking her head violently. "I said, what a set of hummbugs we were in general, and I showed you the scraps of the prince's nails to prove it. The Prince's nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort than all my talents put together. I always carry em about; they re the best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the prince's nails, she must be all right. I give 'em away to the young ladies. They put 'em in albums, [31-32] I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, 'the whole social system' (as the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of Prince's nails!" David Copperfield
It does not seem to me to be enough to say of any description that it is the exact truth. The exact truth must be there; but tbe merit or art in the narrator, is the manner of stating the truth. As to which thing in literature, it always seems to me that there is a world to be done. And in these times, when the tendency is to be frightfully literal and catalogue-like -- to make the thing, in short, a sort of sum in reduction that any miserable creature can do in that way -- I have an idea (really founded on the love of what I profess), that the very holding of popular literature through a kind of popular dark age, may depend on such fanciful treatment. [John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, Book Nine, Chapter I]
Last Modified January 2000