Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】.

Hi, 安澜

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

So you know安澜, our favorite course is that 《名著四合一》.

Yes, right. I really enjoyed making that.

And we're actually making another one.

Yeah.

Since we're both avid readers and we both read quite a bit of classics and literature and all that, and we’ve talked about Shakespeare a lot. But there is another writer when you think about English literature, you just can't avoid him.

No, so we're gonna be talking about Charles Dickens.

狄更斯, by the way, because for us Dickens狄更斯, most people even if they have never read Dickens’ books, they've heard of that name. What is it to British people when just average British people hear the name Charles Dickens?

Well, It depends, to be honest.

So I would say that one of his most famous books is around Christmas, A Christmas Carol.

《圣诞颂歌》.

So we normally associate Charles Dickens with Christmas, or we also associate him with Victorian poverty, all of the struggles of industrialization and the people that it affected.

To be honest, it is like when you think about Dickens, it's not like happy-go-lucky, idyllic England. No. It's soot covered children. That's what I'm picturing.

Exactly, when you think of Charles Dickens, you think of fog, you think of gray skies, you think of coal, you think of pollution, child labor.

But he is still one of these writers that everybody knows about, and even though that I would say that many British people haven't read Charles Dickens, it's one of those writers isn't it?

It's like we know the story we just couldn't be bothered to read them .

Oh exactly. And one of the reasons is that I would say almost every year or every 2 years, there's always a new adaptation of a Dickens novel.

That is another thing I want to mention in Britain like really when you watch TV from time to time, you could see this thing popping up, and you think hang on a minute that looks familiar, and then you realize it’s Dickens, it’s a Dickens adaptation.

Exactly. And some of these adaptations are really, really good and they have some really famous actors in them.

Okay. So in these two episodes, let's talk about Charles Dickens.

Yes.

So first of all, I remember, forgive me if I'm wrong, he was born in the beginning of 19th century?

That's right. Charles Dickens was born on the 7th of February, 1812 in Portsmouth, England.

What was the background like historically. Because you mentioned Victorian England,

Well, Charles Dickens was born before the Victorian era. Portsmouth was a port and it's still the base of the royal navy. And 1812, we were will still fighting Napoleon. So he was born in this area and as with any port, it was filled with people from all over the world, filled with different characters.

Now Dickens wasn't from a poor family.

But also not a rich family.

Well, his family was supposed to be middle class. He was the second of eight children, but the family had a lot of financial difficulties.

Is it like they got into debt or something?

Yes. So when Dickens was 12 years old, his father John Dickens was in prison for debt.

中文就说家道中落

You were originally quite well-off, and because of series of events and you just got hugely into debt.

Back then if you were in debt, you were in prison until you paid the debt. But obviously it was difficult to pay the debt because you were in prison. So young Charles had to leave school and work at a boot blacking factory.

Boot blacking?

A boot blacking factory is somewhere that makes boots look more black.

Sort of like dye or whatever .

Yeah. It’s like polish. And this was a real shock, and the harsh conditions and social injustice that he observed during his time would later influence his novels.

Oh. That's why he wrote about child labor because he was a child laborer.

Exactly.

Was that illegal back...? Obviously it wasn't illegal, child labor was totally okay.

It was absolutely fine.

And that really became a recurring theme, like in Dickens’ novels.

Yeah, but eventually he did return to school. And He began working as a law clerk and a journalist.

I see, that's probably when he started writing.

Exactly. So he was always a writer and being a journalist as well, it gave him a quite unique style, because one of the things is about Dickens is that there's such an eye for detail.

Oh, yeah, so much so that these books are so long.

Exactly, but it also gives him a very clear understanding of the social issues of the time as well.

He's very much of I don't know if this is the right way to categorize him, but he was very much a social realist in that sense. Yes. there was no like fantasy in his world.

No.

It's mainly about the harsh reality.

Exactly. So in 1836, Dickens published his first collection of sketches, Sketches by Boz(《博兹札记》：狄更斯的第一部散文集，内容诙谐轻松，以博兹为笔名，1836年出版) and that was the start of his literary career.

I see. Many famous writers actually started off as a journalist.

Exactly.

But this is how he started, which was the book that got him the fame, was it Pickwick Papers?(《匹克威克外传》：查尔斯·狄更斯的一部小说，讲述了塞缪尔·匹克威克先生和他的朋友们在英国各地的冒险经历。)

The Pickwick Papers. So this was a comic novel and it became so so popular. One of the things about Charles Dickens is that he used to publish in magazines. So every week there was a new chapter.

就是那种连载的, that was the... in like when print media was still really in its heydays and that was the thing.

Then you have like a column basically or you have like a specific section that dedicated to your stories.

Well, exactly. You think about Sherlock Holmes.

Exactly.

Sherlock Holmes was published in a magazine first of all, and I think that's probably why Dickens to us sometimes can feel very, very dense because originally it was meant to be published on a weekly basis. So you read short extract of it. I see. You read a chapter of it, and then you wait until the next week to carry on reading it.

It's almost like modern day soap opera.

Exactly.

So it's not supposed to be all so dense in one thick book. It's just a little bits of it every week.

Exactly. You think about a soap opera if you can watch it all in one sit, if you binge watch it, kind of it's gonna be really difficult.

It's filled with lots of life's challenges.

Exactly.

All right. So how about we talk about a few of the classics that are very well known in Britain?

Yes. I would say that one of his most famous books is Oliver Twist.

安澜, do you know the translation, the translated name in Chinese for Oliver Twist? No. This is just a name, right? We translated into 《雾都孤儿》, Foggy Town Orphan.

Foggy Town Orphan.

Foggy town is obviously foggy old London orphan.

That's telling it as it is.

That pretty much explains the entire book. Oliver twist is the story of a young orphan who is trying to survive in London's underworld.

So the reason why it strike a chord, why it became so famous is that it really focused on what poverty was like and the plight of the poor in Victorian society. And also Dickens was amazing at portraying characters.

So you had Fagin who was kind of a sinister, criminal, I would say mastermind, but he wasn't really a mastermind, he was more like a gang leader of children and then you have Bill Sikes and Nancy.

I think this goes back to his days of just observing everyone, and also journalism as well, which requires you to observe different characters in society.

Well exactly. And it really focus people on the idea of child labor and child exploitation.

剥削儿童.

Yeah.

I'm wondering whether his audience were more the upper class that were educated and they could read and learn about that part of a society they don't know; or is it just for commoners like who actually... they wouldn't be able to...

Come on, you call yourself a commoner, but now... you're highly educated. Back then the child laborers they couldn't read right? They were illiterate or close to...

Yeah, they could probably read a little bit. But no, the average reader was the middle class.

Middle and upper probably.

Exactly. Queen Victoria also liked reading Charles Dickens as well. But generally it was the middle classes because they had the time, they also had the money to buy the magazines. And this is also a time of commuting when people were getting on trains and going to work.

So what would you do if you're sitting on train? You probably read Charles Dickens.

It hasn't really changed that much, like nowadays people still looking on a phone. A lot of them are reading like long novels.

Exactly.