Friday, December 20, 2013

In case you wondered. …

… BBC News - A Point Of View: Why Charles Dickens endures. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As an observer of the human scene Dickens wasn't the cosy sentimentalist to whom we were introduced at school, any more than he was just an angry protestor against Victorian injustice. As he saw it, if I read him right, human life was fickle, erratic and inherently unruly. There was no prospect of remoulding things according to some more exalted plan. Yet this wasn't for Dickens an altogether melancholy thought, for he had a powerful sense of excitement when he contemplated the intractable human world.

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