Ebenezer Scrooge
Miss Havisham
Oliver Twist
David Copperfield
These are among literature's
most fascinating figures
and they were all created
by the same author
And he is one of the
English language's greatest authors
Charles Dickens
Today we are going to
talk about Charles Dickens
by looking at
his life story, works and influence
Charles Dickens was born
in 1812 in England
and he was the second of
eight children
Things were going super well
for a while
The family lived a fancy home
They had servants
He was even going to a private school
Things were great
But as the family¡¯s finance worsen
and his father was imprisoned
for bad debt
Charles had to work at a factory
at age 12
labeling bottles for 11 hours a day
Fortunately
it didn¡¯t last long
eventually his father
got out of prison
and he was able to get back to school
Like many others
he began his literary career
as a journalist
By 1836
he married a woman named
Catherine Hogarth
They'd go on to have 10 children
Early Major Works
Though he had a lot of kids
it's nothing compared
to his literary output
His first famous novel was called
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
or shortly known as
The Pickwick Papers
It's a collection of stories
and achieved enormous popular success
After the success of Pickwick
he wrote one of the influential novel
in his life time
Oliver Twist
which is about a miserable orphan boy
stuck in a workhouse
Part of the story is similar to
Dickens's early life
and Dickens drew on his own experiences
to write it
Christmas Novels and David Copperfield
A Christmas Carol
was a special Christmas book
It's about a guy named
Ebenezer Scrooge
who was visited by three ghosts
on Christmas Eve
The ghosts take Scrooge on a journey
through his past, present and future
in the hope of
transforming his bitterness
You've probably heard someone say
¡®God Bless us everyone¡¯
that's all from it
In 1849£¬he published
David Copperfield
which is his most
directly autobiographical novel
It's about a guy
he has many adventures
He meets lots of interesting people
Dickens' Late Life and works
In 1857
Dickens fell in love with
Ellen Ternan
an actress in his play
He was 45
and she was 18
Next year
after the birth of his tenth children
Dickens left his wife
and their ten children
and stayed with Ellen
Although there are big changes
in his later life
Dickens still worked hard on writing
In 1859 and 1860
he published two historical works
in his life time
They are
A Tale of Two Cities
and Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities is set
in London and in Paris
and the French countryside
at the time of the French Revolution
The book is sympathetic
to the overthrow
of the French aristocracy
but highly critical of
the reign of terror that followed
Great Expectations tells
the story of Pip
an English orphan who rises to wealth
abandon his true friends
and becomes humbled by his own arrogance
In 1870
Dickens died of a stroke
and he was buried in Westminster Abbey
By now
Dickens is over 200 years old
His influence still remains
and many of his phrases
characters and ideas
have merged themselves
into modern English
Let's take a look at
three words and expressions
The first one is Dickensian
In English
if we want to describe
hard living or working conditions
like something in Dickens's novels
we can call it Dickensian
So Dickensian describes
hard living and working conditions
as often found in Dickens's novels
The second one is scrooge
In English
when we want to talk about someone
who hates spending money
we call them a scrooge
which is the name of a character
in Dickens's famous novel
A Christmas Carol
He was very mean with money
So Scrooge is about a person
who hates spending money
The last one is a phrase
What the Dickens¡­?
In English
if you are surprised or angry
we can say what the Dickens?
So this is an old-fashioned expression
of surprise or anger
So much for Charles Dickens
Next let¡¯s take a quiz
If you have the difficulty
please watch the video again
and I hope this will help you
learn better in the class
Thank you !