Reprinted Pieces

by Charles Dickens

The stories and articles in this volume are reprinted from Dickens' weekly magazine Household Words, published between 1850 and 1859. The pieces collected here cover the full range of Dickens' journalism - stories, reminiscences, descriptions, and criticism.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Collections, Short Stories, 19th Century

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Nathan Casebolt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Today, you couldn’t get away with publishing an anthology of your own short-form literature and calling it “Reprinted Pieces.” I can imagine an editor with a bent toward sarcasm asking why you don’t just call it “Microwaved Leftovers.”

As his own editor, Charles Dickens didn’t need to worry about pushback. He originally published this mix of essays and short stories in his literary magazine “Household Words,” and fans of Dickens can be thankful he preserved them in a collection rather than letting them fade away in unread back copies.

In all honesty, the target audience for this book today is Dickens fanboys such as myself. The writing does reflect his trademarks of close observation, colorful description, and wry humor. But if you mostly like Dickens for his novels, be forewarned that few of these reprinted pieces are fiction.

What may interest the average reader is the way Dickens reflects the transition to the Age of Steam. By this time, he had money and leisure to travel in a way quite familiar to modernity. In “Out of Town,” he examines changes wrought in a harbor town, once a tumbledown fishing village, now a gentrifying transit point for travelers to and from France by railroad and steamship.

In other essays, he gasps at the miracle of “flying” (by train and boat) from London to Paris in just eleven hours. He sketches both the dilapidated charms of his favorite seaside retreat in England and the charming liveliness of his favorite seaside retreat in France. In his most self-deprecating manner, he writes of three days he spent in a seaside town, each day being duty-bound to investigate his surroundings and thus always putting off until tomorrow the writing he meant to do today.

This Dickensian talent for poking fun at human nature, even his own, is on full display. One of my favorite examples is “Lying Awake,” an account of a random stream of consciousness keeping him in frustrated wakefulness when all he wants to do is sleep. Who among us can’t relate?

Poking fun at human nature, of course, was Dickens’s preferred method of social criticism. He offers a fictional monologue from a meek father watching helplessly as his mother-in-law assaults his baby with the latest idiotic child-rearing theories. He savages the faddish infatuation with the “noble savage” in an essay that would deeply offend today’s multicultural sensibilities. He’s irritated by scam artists and their begging-letters, as well as by a stultifying bureaucracy that smothers innovation. This last theme is especially biting in his satire of the Crimean War in which Prince Bull’s war with Prince Bear is crippled by the fairy godmother Tape, who is red from head to toe. (Get it? Red Tape?)

What the modern reader, though, might find most attractive are his multiple essays on the detectives of Scotland Yard, an institution just in its third decade at the time. Dickens usually had a low opinion of police and courts; but he clearly felt differently about the detective police who, in his estimation, were as driven by duty and professionalism as their counterparts were by incompetence and corruption.

These true-crime tales are riveting, whether it’s that of the detective who went undercover to break up a gang of traffickers in stolen goods or Dickens’s record of his own night patrol of London’s mean streets under the protection of Inspector Field. These hints at the dawn of modern police methods are as intriguing now as they must have been at the time.

As I said, this is mostly a work for Dickens fans, but might be your cup of tea if you want a street-level perspective on the 19th-century English transition to modernity. My only advice is that, unless you enjoy Dickens’s propensity to cloying sweetness, you skip “A Child’s Dream of a Star.” I might be a fan, but I don’t like his saccharine side. However, if you enjoy spoonfuls of frosting sprinkled with sugar and drizzled in syrup, then this might be just the tale for you.

[Millstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories and articles written for magazine publication, mostly in the 1850s. Worth it for the intermittent verbal and descriptive fireworks, to spot the themes which emerge in the novels and for completists.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of pieces from periodicals and newspapers: some non-fiction interviews or travelogues, some short stories. Some of the pieces were good —many of us who struggle with insomnia can relate to “Lying Awake”— others were over-the-top sentimental pap.

I became fascinated with Dickens in eighth grade when one of the founders of The Dickens Universe at UCSC gave a lecture at my school. I attended several Dickens Universes as a teenage by volunteering to help run events, and made a goal to read all of Shakespeare and all of Dickens before graduating High School (partly this goal was inspired by always wanting to understand the references in the conversation of adults around me). I came close to the goal, but was a few books short at graduation. I then slowed down finishing the goal, and now this collection stands as the final Dickens I had meant to read, finished 24 years later (with a lot of other reading in the meantime). Perhaps not surprisingly, I have begun to re-read the best Dickens novels because I don’t remember them that well, and I have long had a taste for 19th century classics. I think Dickens was a terrible human in his personal life, but I enjoy aspects of his writing.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.32⭐

The Long Voyage 3.25⭐
The Begging-Letter Writer 4⭐
A Child's Dream of a Star 4⭐
Our English Watering Place 3.25⭐
Our French Watering Place 3⭐
Bill-Sticking 3⭐
Births, Mrs. Meek, of a Son 4⭐
Lying Awake 2⭐
The Ghost of Art 3⭐
Out of Town 3⭐
Out of the Season 3⭐
A Poor Man's Tale of a Patient 4.5⭐
The Noble Savage 3.5⭐
A Flight 3.5⭐
The Detective Police 3.25⭐
Three 'Detective' Anecdotes 2.5⭐
On Duty with Inspector Field 3.5⭐
Down with the Tide 3.5⭐
A Walk in the Workhorse 4⭐
Prince Bull a Fairy Tale 3⭐
A Plated Article 3⭐
Our Honorable Friend 3⭐
Our School 4⭐
Our Vestry 3⭐
Men of Mooneymount 3⭐
Our Bore 3.5⭐
A Monument of French Folly 3.25⭐

[BrandosEgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

TOP PIECES:

#3 - The Noble Savage

#2 - The Poor Relations Story
(Building castles in the air, In Love with Life)

#1 - The Child's Story
(A Beautiful Life or "A Magic Journey" of Love and Loss followed by a Traveler in 5 parts; Childhood, Boyhood, Young Man, Middle-Aged Gentlemen, Old Man. Extreme Wisdom here. A Very Touching Short Story)

Out of the 30 odd pieces I also highly rated:
Our Bore, Prince Bull a Fairy Tale, Births Mrs. Meek of a Son, A Childs Dream of a Star, The Begging Letter Writer and Down with The Tide, A Walk in a Workhouse and The Detective Pieces.

[Jason Furman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of pieces from Dickens wrote for his journal Household Words in the 1950s. Most of them are sketches, although a few are short stories. They are of uneven interest. The best of them are a series of pieces about London's new detectives that are exciting because you feel you're reading the very inception of the detective novel and the first version of the character that became Inspector Bucket in Bleak House. The sequence of pieces begins with a number of detectives/inspectors coming together to the editorial offices of Household Words and sitting around to share their stories: "They sit down in a semi-circle (the two Inspectors at the two ends) at a little distance from the round table, facing the editorial sofa... We light the cigars, and hand round the glasses (which are very temperately used indeed), and the conversation begins..." What follows are a number of different incident of investigating and apprehending various criminals.

Two of the pieces in the volume are travelogues about France, which are both amusingly written and insightful.

The "Ghost of Art" is, as the title suggests, a ghost story--not close to Dickens' best but interesting nonetheless.

And I can't think of anything else that is particularly must read in this collection.

[Bob Wratz]

Includes the poignant, sad, beautiful short story, "A Child's Dream of a Star."

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Reprinted" does not necessarily mean worthy of another read. Mostly dull and forgettable, with the exception of the few detective vignettes.