Charles Dickens: Six things he gave the modern world

By Alex Hudson BBC News Magazine

With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens quickly approaching, and an entire series of events planned, what is the lasting legacy of his work and his causes?

Charles Dickens is one of the most important writers of the 19th Century. But his influence goes far beyond just literature. Many of his phrases, characters and ideas have engrained themselves in modern culture.
Two centuries on, what are the things still seen today that Dickens first offered us in his writing?

A white Christmas

Modern commentators have described Dickens as "the man who invented Christmas". Not obviously the religious festival, but the wider popular culture phenomenon that surrounds it.

Dickens was an outspoken critic of slavery and wrote extensively against social inequality

In the early 19th Century, Christmas had become "scarcely worth a mention", according to critic and writer Leigh Hunt.
As an example, the committee of the Carlton Club, which ran the Conservative Party at the time, arranged ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day itself.
While Prince Albert is often credited with the revival of Christmas and the introduction of the Christmas tree, many believe that Dickens's popular depictions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come.
Specifically, the idea of a white Christmas - which was and still remains a relatively uncommon occurrence in much of the UK - appears in A Christmas Carol as if it happened each and every year.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens is on BBC Two, Monday 2 Jan as part of the BBC's Dickens season

• Dickens on the BBC

In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas, it is interesting to note that in fact during the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually exist before the idealised image."

Writer and renowned Dickens expert GK Chesterton perhaps best summed up how the great author's romantic view of Christmas has permeated throughout the world.
"Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us," he wrote.

'Dickensian' poverty

One of the things Dickens cared about most was those at the bottom. He was one of the first to offer an unflinching look at the underclass and the poverty stricken in Victorian London.

The labour houses of Bethnal Green in East London were not the nicest places to be

And this was an area in which he had some experience.
His father had little skill in financial management and this eventually put him and all of his family in a debtors' prison for six months.
The young Dickens worked in a cousin's shop, pasting labels on blacking bottles for six shillings a week.
After he became famous, Dickens helped popularise the term "red tape" to describe the bureaucracy in positions of power that particularly hurt the weak and poor.

Stars of the BBC's new adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations on the story's continuing relevance

"Dickensian" has now become the easiest word to describe an unacceptable level of poverty.
In 2009, when president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers wanted to talk about the deprivation in some areas, it was not described as terrible or horrific but as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".
This less than perfect England was described by other authors like Benjamin Disraeli and Mrs Gaskell but it is Dickens's view that has really resonated through the ages.Continued