Was Charles Dickens a nice person?

Does it matter?

Oliver Twist was the first ‘real’ book I ever read. ‘Real’ as opposed to the children’s books that forged my first ideas and imagination.

Ever since, I loved Dickens. I read his books, I studied him in school, his work became part of my life through its presence over the years.

From time to time I go back to the books and re-read them, or sometimes just fragments, to capture the joy Dickens’ books and his writing bring me.

Not even once during those thirty something years of studying and reading Dickens did I ever wonder about his quality as a human being. It has always been about the work.

This has changed though in our world, and now we do seem to care about somebody’s quality as a person not just about their professional output.

Is that right or wrong?

I honestly don’t think the answer is clear cut and straightforward.

I asked Chatty the above question: Was Charles Dickens a nice person?

And I quite liked the answer so I am pasting it below.

AI generated info:

Charles Dickens was a brilliant writer but a complicated man — both admired and criticized in his personal life.

Here’s the short version:

👍 The Nice Side:

• Empathetic: He deeply cared about the poor and marginalized, especially children. His novels often exposed societal injustices (think Oliver Twist, Hard Times, Bleak House).

• Charitable: He supported hospitals, shelters, and even co-founded a home for "fallen women" (Urania Cottage) with Angela Burdett-Coutts.

• Energetic & Generous: Friends often described him as charming, enthusiastic, and larger-than-life. He performed public readings and gave proceeds to charity.

👎 The Not-So-Nice Side:

• Horrible to His Wife: He had ten children with Catherine Hogarth, but grew cold, blamed her for their large family, and eventually separated from her—publicly and cruelly. He even tried to get her institutionalized.

• Secret Affair: He had a long-term relationship with actress Ellen Ternan (much younger), which he hid to protect his image.

• Control Freak: He could be domineering, demanding, and emotionally manipulative, especially with family and close colleagues.

TL;DR:

Dickens was a social reformer with a golden pen and a flawed ego with a Victorian sense of male entitlement. So… nice to the poor, but a jerk at home.

If he were on Twitter today, he'd be trending for both #HeroOfThePeople and #VictorianGaslighter.

End of AI generated info.

So, what do we do with that?

Would Dickens have been cancelled if he lived in our times?

Maybe. For sure he would be disputed by some, but at the same time the fact that he was a champion for the poor writing extensively against child labor, debtor’s prisons and social inequality, would gain him some support.

Should we care about the world he lived in, his life experiences or should we go with Roland Barthes and declare that ‘the author is dead’ and just care about the work itself not giving a second thought to the man Dickens was?

Each person must make up their own mind.

Me, I am sorry Dickens was not a better human, but I am not in a position to judge or understand him. I did not live in the same world, I did not have his experiences, it is not within my ability to know what really was.

So I am left with his books, his stories and I am grateful he has written them.

Below, one of my most favorite quotes from A Christmas Carol:

‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.’