Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is the great novelist, the bright representative of critical realism of the 19th century, the inimitable and glorified reader of his own works, the founder of one-man show in which he was an author, a director and an actor.

The love of readers had come to Charles Dickens after the publication of his first book and lasted all his life. People in big cities and remote small villages became absorbed in Dickens’ books; representatives of all estates, both old men and children read him, looking forward to the next issue of the magazine where his works were published. All the kaleidoscope of heroes, from a boastful aristocrat to a homeless tramp, once ignored by writers, all the “violent turmoil of raging lives” had finally found their passionate readers in different corners of the globe.

The National Library of Belarus offers a book exhibition “Inimitable Dickens” timed to the 200th anniversary from the date of Charles Dickens’ birth. The anniversary exposition includes about 100 editions: selected and separate works, graphic materials and literature about the writer’s life and career.

The books published in the author’s lifetime “David Copperfield” (1849) and “Our mutual Friend” (1864) are also on display.

The writer’s best works “The Adventures of Oliver Twist”, “A Tale of the Riots of Eighty” (“Barnaby Rudge”), “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit”, “Little Dorrit”, “Bleak House”, “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” are presented in series “The Golden Classics” and “Foreign Classics”.

Numerous and various is literature dedicated to the writer’s life and creativity. The book by Hesketh Pearson “Dickens” (1963) published in the well-known series of biographies “Outstanding People’s Life” depicts Dickens as a writer, a director, a conjurer and a great actor who makes the audience rock with laughter and burst into tears.

The book by English writer and literary critic Angus Wilson “Charles Dickens’ World” (1975) is the tribute to the centenary of the great novelist’s death.

Charles Dickens, like many outstanding writers, was a publisher and an editor at once. The great novelist, he was also a publisher and an editor, the head and soul of two eminent journals – “Household Words” and “All the Year Round” which had been published, one after another, for twenty years. The book by M.V. Urnov “Inimitable. Charles Dickens, the Publisher and Editor” (1990) is about the writer’s publishing activities.

The exhibition is designed for foreign literature professors and teachers, students and senior pupils and also for everyone who is interested in English literature.