Six months at Lausanne; three months at Paris. _Dombey and Son._
1849-50. _David Copperfield._
1850. Editor of weekly periodical, _Household Words_.
1851-2. Manager of theatrical performances. 1852. _Bleak House._
1853. Italian tour: Rome, Naples, and Venice.
1856. Purchase of Gadshill House, near Rochester.
1858. Beginning of public readings.
1859. _Tale of Two Cities_ appears in _All the Year Round_.
1860. Gadshill becomes his home instead of London.
1867. Second American journey. Public readings in America.
1869. April, collapse at Chester. Readings stopped.
1870. Dies at Gadshill, June 9.

CHARLES DICKENS

NOVELIST AND SOCIAL REFORMER

In these days when critics so often repeat the cry of 'art for art's
sake' and denounce Ruskin for bringing moral canons into his judgements
of pictures or buildings, it is dangerous to couple these two titles
together, and to label Dickens as anything but a novelist pure and
simple. And indeed, all would admit that the creator of Sam Weller and
Sarah Gamp will live when the crusade against 'Bumbledom' and its
abuses is forgotten and the need for such a crusade seems incredible.
But when so many recent critics have done justice to his gifts as a
creative artist, this aspect of his work runs no danger of being
forgotten. Moreover, when we are considering Dickens as a Victorian
worthy and as a representative man of his age, it is desirable to bring
out those qualities which he shared with so many of his great
contemporaries. Above all, we must remember that Dickens himself would
be the last man to be ashamed of having written 'with a purpose', or to
think that the fact should be concealed as a blemish in his art. There
was nothing in which he felt more genuine pride than in the thought that
his talents thus employed had brought public opinion to realize the need
for many practical reforms in our social condition. If these old abuses
have mostly passed away, we may be thankful indeed; but we cannot feel
sure that in the future fresh abuses will not arise with which the
example of Dickens may inspire others to wage war. His was a strenuous
life; he never spared himself nor stinted his efforts in any cause for
which he was fighting; and if he did not win complete victory in his
lifetime, he created the spirit in which victory was to be won.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second child of a large family,
his father being at the time a Navy clerk employed at Portsmouth. Of his