A Tale of Two Cities (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [2]
topics as factory conditions, penal reform, education reform, the Poor Law Commission, and the First Reform Bill of 1832.
1833 After four arduous years, Dickens’s affair with Beadnell dissolves in the face of her family’s disapproval. He publishes his first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” in the Monthly Magazine . The British Parliament passes the Factory Act, which regulates child labor and forces children to attend school until age thirteen.
1834 Dickens becomes a journalist for the Morning Chronicle , a job that requires frequent travel and attendance at political meet ings. He continues to publish stories and sketches in periodi cals. The Poor Law Amendment Act ends out-of-door relief (aid given to the poor in their own homes) and compels those in need of assistance to enter workhouses, where con ditions are very harsh.
1835 Dickens becomes engaged to Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle.
1836 Dickens writes in several different genres and achieves signif icant literary success. Adopting the pseudonym “Boz,” based on his pronunciation as a young child of Moses as “Boses,” Dickens publishes in volume form Sketches by Boz, a collection of his earlier writings. He marries Catherine Hogarth; the couple eventually will have ten children. Dickens becomes in tensely and unceasingly prolific, continuing to write fever ishly throughout his life. He begins The Pickwick Papers , his first novel, which sets the precedent of serialization that he will follow for nearly all of his novels. He meets his future biogra pher John Forster.
1837 Victoria is crowned queen. Dickens becomes the editor of Bentley’s Miscellany and begins publishing installments of his novel Oliver Twist in the journal.
1838 Oliver Twist is published in three volumes, while the serial pub lication in Bentley’s continues. The novel is extremely popular, and three dramatic versions are produced in London theaters in the winter of 1838-1839.
1839 Nicholas Nickleby is published. Because of tension with Richard Bentley, Dickens resigns his editorship and devotes himself fully to writing. The Dickens family moves to Devonshire Terrace.
1840 Dickens establishes his own weekly miscellany, Master
Humphrey’s Clock, and writes all the content himself. After eigh teen months, sales fall off, and he is forced to abandon the periodical. To generate capital, he quickly begins serial publication of The Old Curiosity Shop .
1841 Dickens publishes Barnaby Rudge . He publicly denounces the child-labor laws and abysmal factory conditions of the times; he lambastes the Tories, who oppose humane labor laws.
1842 Accompanied by Catherine, an exhausted Dickens travels to America, where he is lionized. His popularity there falters upon the publication of American Notes , a chronicle that records his negative reactions to the United States.
1843 Dickens publishes the most famous and best-loved of his an nual Christmas books, A Christmas Carol , which had taken him only a matter of weeks to write.
1844 The Dickens family relocates to Genoa, Italy, where they re main for a year.
1846 Dickens signs on as the first editor of the Daily News but soon leaves because of disagreements with the publishers. The fam ily moves to Switzerland, then Paris, and remains abroad for six months.
1847 Upon his return to London, Dickens helps Miss Angela Burdett Coutts start a home for reformed prostitutes, which he later runs. William Makepeace Thackeray begins publishing Vanity Fair in monthly parts.
1848 Dombey and Son, published in one volume, heralds Dickens’s more mature and decidedly dark period, which over the next two decades yields such major works as David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). Dickens begins to run a private the ater, in which he acts and performs for charity. His company of amateurs includes painter Augustus Egg, who depicts scenes from novels by Sir Walter Scott,