Charles Dickens
CHAPTER I
HIS TIMES
More than a quarter of a century has now elapsed since the death of Charles Dickens. The time which shaped him and sent him forth is so far behind us, as to have become a matter of historical study for the present generation; the time which knew him as one of its foremost figures, and owed so much to the influences of his wondrous personality, is already made remote by a social revolution of which he watched the mere beginning. It seems possible to regard Dickens from the standpoint of posterity; to consider his career, to review his literary work, and to estimate his total activity in relation to an age which, intelligibly speaking, is no longer our own.
When Queen Victoria came to the throne Charles Dickens was twenty-five years old. To say that he was twenty in the year 1832
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