"at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in the 1980s, where she was a classmate of actor Ross Kemp. After taking some smaller parts on television productions such as ""The Bill"", in November 1994 Chambers played the role of Charity Pecksniff in the TV serialisation of the Charles Dickens novel ""Martin Chuzzlewit"". From 1994 to 2007, she played the role of Alice Tinker in the BBC comedy ""The Vicar of Dibley"". Chambers appeared in all 20 episodes and four Comic Relief specials until 2007. In 1998, Chambers won the British Comedy Award for Best Actress for her performance. Chambers"
"Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens's third novel. The novel centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies. ""Nicholas Nickleby"" is Charles Dickens's third published novel. He returned to his favourite publishers and to the format that was considered so successful with ""The Pickwick Papers"". The story first appeared in monthly parts, after which it was issued in one volume. The"
"fees and has them do draughting work that he passes off as his own. He has two spoiled daughters, nicknamed Cherry and Merry, having been christened as Charity and Mercy. Unbeknown to Martin, Pecksniff has actually taken him on to establish closer ties with the wealthy grandfather, thinking that this will gain Pecksniff a prominent place in the will. Young Martin befriends Tom Pinch, a kind-hearted soul whose late grandmother had given Pecksniff all she had, believing Pecksniff would make an architect and gentleman of him. Pinch is incapable of believing any of the bad things others tell him of"
"a real Yorkshire schoolmaster named William Shaw became the basis for Dickens's brutal character of Wackford Squeers. Dickens visited Shaw's school in Bowes and based the school section of ""Nicholas Nickleby"" on his visit. Like most of Dickens's early works, the novel had a contemporary setting. Much of the action takes place in London, with several chapters taking place in Dickens's birthplace of Portsmouth, as well as settings in Yorkshire and Devon. The tone of the work is that of ironic social satire, with Dickens taking aim at what he perceives to be social injustices. Many memorable characters are introduced,"
"wasted lives by attempting to help a homeless mother and baby. Jacob Marley Jacob Marley is a fictional character who appears in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella ""A Christmas Carol"". He is Ebenezer Scrooge’s deceased business partner, now a chained and tormented ghost, doomed to wander the earth forever as punishment for his greed and selfishness when he was alive. Marley roams restlessly, witnessing the hardships others suffer and lamenting that he has forever lost his chance to help them. Marley arranges for the three spirits to visit Scrooge and gives his friend an opportunity for redemption, which Marley tells him"
"living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone, to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser, and friend until Dickens's death in 1870. Dickens modeled the character of Agnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary. He described his impressions in a travelogue, ""American Notes for General Circulation"". Dickens includes in ""Notes"" a powerful condemnation of slavery, which he had attacked as early as ""The Pickwick Papers"", correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters. In spite of the"
"one short story ""The Lamplighter's Story"". Other contributors included William Harrison Ainsworth, Thomas Moore, Leitch Ritchie and Agnes Strickland. Macrone's widow eventually received 450 pounds from this charitable publication. Mary Weller, Charles Dickens's nurse, recalling her famous charge's occupations as a child, said: ""Little Charles was a terrible boy to read"". ""In the young Charles Dickens's reading we have in some ways the very core of his novels...the young Charles came upon the great picaresque novels of the eighteenth century — ""Roderick Random"", ""Peregrine Pickle"", ""Humphry Clinker"", ""Tom Jones"", ""The Vicar of Wakefield"", their French counterpart ""Gil Blas"", and their"
"bit."" In cinema, the CGI movie ""Barbie in a Christmas Carol"" features a snooty cat named Chuzzlewit who is the pet of Barbie's character Eden Starling. John Travolta's character quotes from the novel in ""A Love Song for Bobby Long"". The novel features prominently in Jasper Fforde's novel ""The Eyre Affair"". Martin Chuzzlewit The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (commonly known as Martin Chuzzlewit) is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialised between 1842 and 1844. While writing it Dickens told a friend that he thought it his best work,"
"Pecksniff, and always defends him vociferously. Pinch works for exploitatively low wages, while believing he is the unworthy recipient of Pecksniff's charity. When Martin senior hears of his grandson's new life, he demands that Pecksniff kick young Martin out. Then, Martin senior moves in and falls under Pecksniff's control. During this time, Pinch falls in love with Mary, but does not declare it, knowing of her attachment to young Martin. One of Martin senior's greedy relatives is his brother, Anthony Chuzzlewit, who is in business with his son, Jonas. Despite considerable wealth, they live miserly, cruel lives, with Jonas constantly"
"known as the Great Migration. The painter Thomas Gainsborough lived and worked in Ipswich. In 1835, Charles Dickens stayed in Ipswich and used it as a setting for scenes in his novel ""The Pickwick Papers"". The hotel where he resided first opened in 1518; it was then known as The Tavern and later became known as the Great White Horse Hotel. Dickens made the hotel famous in chapter XXII of ""The Pickwick Papers"", vividly describing the hotel's meandering corridors and stairs. The hotel now houses a branch of Cotswolds In 1797 Lord and Lady Nelson moved to Ipswich, and in"
"very close. Dickens's connection with Chapman & Hall began in 1836, when William Hall made to Dickens the suggestion which ultimately led to the publication of ""The Pickwick Papers"". The firm subsequently published ""Nicholas Nickleby"", ""Master Humphrey's Clock"", ""Barnaby Rudge"", ""The Old Curiosity Shop"", ""Martin Chuzzlewit"", and ""A Christmas Carol""; but in 1844 Dickens quarrelled with the firm, and entered into relations with Bradbury & Evans. In 1859, however, Dickens renewed his connection with Chapman & Hall, who issued the remainder of his books. In 1845 Chapman & Hall published the second edition of Thomas Carlyle's ""Life of Schiller"", and"
"Dickens by his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts. In an 1844 stage version of ""Martin Chuzzlewit"" authorised by Dickens at the Queen's Theatre Sarah Gamp was played by the actor and comedian Thomas Manders. Mrs. Gamp appears in ""Dickensian"", at first nursing Little Nell at the Old Curiosity Shop and later tending to Silas Wegg (from ""Our Mutual Friend""), played by Pauline Collins. Sarah Gamp Sarah or Sairey Gamp is a nurse in the novel ""Martin Chuzzlewit"" by Charles Dickens, first published as a serial in 1843–1844. Mrs. Gamp, as she is usually referred to, is dissolute, sloppy and generally drunk. She"
"Peggotty The Peggotty family are fictional characters in Charles Dickens's 1850 novel ""David Copperfield"". Yarmouth fisherman Daniel Peggotty is the brother of Clara. Referred to as ""Mr. Peggotty"", he is a fisherman and dealer in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish. He lives in a converted boat on the beach at Yarmouth with Emily, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. When Emily abandons them to elope with Steerforth, Daniel vows to find her. Steerforth later leaves Emily and she is re-united with Daniel. At the end of the novel Daniel, Emily, and Mrs. Gummidge resettle in Australia. Clara Peggotty is usually referred to as"
"Gabriel Grub from ""The Pickwick Papers"" was also an influence when creating Scrooge. Scrooge's name came from a tombstone Dickens had seen on a visit to Edinburgh. The grave was for Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, whose job was given as a meal man—a corn merchant; Dickens misread the inscription as ""mean man"". When Dickens was young he lived near a tradesman's premises with the sign ""Goodge and Marney"", which may have provided the name for Scrooge's former business partner. For the chained Marley, Dickens drew on his memory of a visit to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 1842,"
"to Charles Dickens' Mr. Pickwick and company. In chapter four of ""Cordelia Underwood"", Cordelia finds a copy of ""The Pickwick Papers"" in her uncle's trunk. Author Van Reid says that the names of the characters Ephram, Eagleton and Thump were chosen to evoke the sound of a heavy object falling downstairs. The name Tobias was consciously borrowed from the character of Uncle Toby in Laurence Sterne’s ""The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman""; Walton from Izaak Walton, author of ""The Compleat Angler"". Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump adhere to different political parties, go to separate churches, subscribe to different newspapers,"
"Jacob Marley Jacob Marley is a fictional character who appears in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella ""A Christmas Carol"". He is Ebenezer Scrooge’s deceased business partner, now a chained and tormented ghost, doomed to wander the earth forever as punishment for his greed and selfishness when he was alive. Marley roams restlessly, witnessing the hardships others suffer and lamenting that he has forever lost his chance to help them. Marley arranges for the three spirits to visit Scrooge and gives his friend an opportunity for redemption, which Marley tells him was ""...a chance and hope of my procuring."" In ""A Christmas"
"Frederick Dickens Frederick William Dickens (4 July 1820 – 20 October 1868) was the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens and was Charles Dickens's younger brother, who lived with Charles when he moved on to Furnival's Inn in 1834. He was the inspiration for two different Freds in his brother's books: the jovial nephew of Ebenezer Scrooge in ""A Christmas Carol"" and the dissolute brother of Little Nell in ""The Old Curiosity Shop"". While Fred was a child and a youth, Charles Dickens often described him as his favourite brother, showing great concern for his welfare. As a boy, Fred"
"was originally issued in 19 monthly numbers; the last was a double-number and cost two shillings instead of one. Each number comprised 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Phiz: Online editions Analysis Resources Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens's third novel. The novel centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies. ""Nicholas Nickleby"" is Charles Dickens's third published novel."
"Jack Sheppard (novel) Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in ""Bentley's Miscellany"" from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is a historical romance and a Newgate novel based on the real life of the 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard. ""Jack Sheppard"" was serially published in ""Bentley's Miscellany"" from January 1839 until February 1840. The novel was intertwined with the history of Charles Dickens's ""Oliver Twist"", which ran in the same publication from February 1837 to April 1839. Dickens, previously a friend of Ainsworth's, became distant from Ainsworth as a controversy brewed over the"
"Sam Weller (character) Sam Weller is a fictional character in ""The Pickwick Papers"", the first novel by Charles Dickens, and is the character that made Dickens famous. Weller first appeared in the tenth serialised episode. Previously the monthly parts of the book had been doing badly—the humour of the character transformed the book into a publishing phenomenon. Weller's way of quoting people has led to the wellerism, often a type of proverb. In chapter 10 of the novel, the eponymous hero Mr. Pickwick meets Sam Weller working at the White Hart Inn in The Borough and soon takes him on"
"discovered in the church's crypt by author Stephen Jarvis. The tombstone has since been acquired by the Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street, London where it went on permanent public display from 27 July 2010. In his 2014 novel , which is part dramatised fictional biography of Seymour, part forensic analysis of the ""authorial"" controversy, part socio-literary history of the entire Pickwick phenomenon, Stephen Jarvis puts together a substantial case against Dickens's and Chapman's accepted version of events. This is plausibly based on inconsistencies in Dickens's various prefaces to the book and flaws in Chapman's supporting testimony, as well"
"practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Roylance was ""a reduced [impoverished] old lady, long known to our family"", whom Dickens later immortalised, ""with a few alterations and embellishments"", as ""Mrs. Pipchin"" in ""Dombey and Son"". Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, ""a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman... with a quiet old wife"" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in ""The Old Curiosity Shop""."
"both mild and bitter beer from the same barrel. Two holes were made and she was left with one thumb rammed against one and the other jammed into the other; the trickster then made off. In literature Jeanie Deans of Sir Walter Scott's novel ""The Heart of Midlothian"" travels through several communities on the Great North Road on her way to London. The road features in ""The Pickwick Papers"" by Charles Dickens. Part of the J. B. Priestley novel ""The Good Companions"" mentions the road which represented to northerner Jess Oakroyd, as the gateway to such exotic destinations as Nottingham."
"Dora Annie Dickens Dora Annie Dickens (16 August 1850 – 14 April 1851) was the infant daughter of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She was the ninth of their ten children, and the youngest of their three daughters. Born at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Dora Dickens was named after the character Dora Spenlow, the child-bride of David Copperfield in Dickens's 1850 novel ""David Copperfield"". According to Dickens's oldest daughter Mary, on the day of Dora's unexpected death on 14 April 1851, her father had spent much of his time ""playing with the children and carrying little Dora about"
"in Broadstairs from around 1796 to 1822. Mary Pearson Strong's former home now hosts Broadstairs' Dickens House Museum. There is a public house in Clerkenwell, Central London, called ""The Betsey Trotwood"". It adopted the name in 1983, having previously been ""The Butcher's Arms"". Betsey Trotwood Betsey Trotwood is a fictional character from Charles Dickens' 1850 novel ""David Copperfield"". Betsey Trotwood is David Copperfield's great-aunt on his father's side, and has an unfavourable view of men and boys, having been ill-used and abandoned by a worthless husband earlier in life. She appears in the novel's first chapter, where she demonstrates her"
"and Fireside"". From a secular viewpoint, the cultural historian Penne Restad suggests that Scrooge's redemption underscores ""the conservative, individualistic and patriarchal aspects"" of Dickens's """"Carol"" philosophy"" of charity and altruism. Dickens wrote ""A Christmas Carol"" in response to British social attitudes towards poverty, particularly child poverty, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it. The story shows Scrooge as a paradigm for self-interest, and the possible repercussions of ignoring the poor, especially children in poverty—personified by the allegorical figures of Want and Ignorance. The two figures were created to arouse sympathy with"
"scenes in ""The Pickwick Papers"" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens ""issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together"". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that ""Great Expectations"" was more seditious than Marx's ""Das Kapital"". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (""Bleak House"", 1853; ""Little Dorrit"", 1857; ""Our Mutual Friend"", 1865), not only underscored his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured"
"A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ""A Christmas Carol"" recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. Dickens wrote ""A Christmas Carol"" during a period when the British were"
"jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy."" Peggotty The Peggotty family are fictional characters in Charles Dickens's 1850 novel ""David Copperfield"". Yarmouth fisherman Daniel Peggotty is the brother of Clara. Referred to as ""Mr. Peggotty"", he is a fisherman and dealer in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish. He lives in a converted boat on the beach at Yarmouth with Emily,"
"Mary Hogarth Mary Scott Hogarth (26 October 1819 – 7 May 1837) was the sister of Catherine Dickens ( Hogarth) and the sister-in-law of Charles Dickens. Hogarth first met Charles Dickens aged 14, and after Dickens married Hogarth's sister Catherine, Mary lived with the couple for a year. Hogarth died suddenly in 1837, which caused Dickens to miss the publication dates for two novels: ""The Pickwick Papers"" and ""Oliver Twist"". Hogarth later became the inspiration for a number of characters in Dickens novels, including Rose Maylie in ""Oliver Twist"" and Little Nell in ""The Old Curiosity Shop"". Charles and Catherine"
"Charles Dickens novels are littered with stock-market speculations, villains, swindlers and fictional speculators. Little Dorrit (1857) The financial house of Mr Merdle; Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) 'Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Company, modeled loosely on the South Sea Bubble,- is in essence a classic Ponzi scheme; Nicholas Nickleby (1839) Ralph Nickleby's great Joint Stock Company, United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company; David Copperfield (1850) the false accounting by the sycophant Uriah Heep, clerk to lawyer Mr Wickfield; South Sea Company The South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain,"
"author who studied Dickens, believed that Dickens wanted to ""give the story a different ending."" Hogarth is also seen as the inspiration for Little Nell in ""The Old Curiosity Shop"". Nell had many traits that Dickens associated to Howarth, including describing Nell as ""young, beautiful and good"", and Nell also dies suddenly in the book. Other characters believed to have been inspired by Mary include Kate Nickleby, the 17-year-old sister of the hero of the novel ""Nicholas Nickleby""; Agnes Wickfield, the heroine in ""David Copperfield"" (her character was a mixture of both Mary and Georgina, another of Dickens' sister-in-laws); Ruth"
"near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by the author's great-great grandsons, Ian and Gerald Dickens. Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from ""The Pickwick Papers"". The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, Dickens World, standing in part on the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office, opened"