Charles Dickens—his life and works

Today the novel is the dominant literary form, and the serious novelist is automatically regarded as being a serious artist. Yet, throughout the eighteenth century the novel was regarded by critics and commentators as a minor and suspect form, not really worthy of being considered art at all. The rise of the novel, in both popularity and esteem, during the nineteenth century was largely owing to the success of two novelists : Sir Walter Scott, whose serious reputation, established by the successful poetry he had written before turning his hand to the writing of novels, lent respectability to the fiction he produced : and Charles Dickens, whose enormous popular success penetrated to all levels of society, raised him from obscure and slightly disreputable antecedents to a high position among the eminent Victorians, and wrung from such suspicious intellectuals as Carlyle the grudging concession that prose fiction so entertaining deserved to be read.