Finally, after months of fevered preparation, it is Charles Dickens’ bi-centenary. The Prince of Wales will lay a wreath in Westminster Abbey later this morning; and numerous countries from the Commonwealth and the English speaking world have sent wreath-bearing delegations to the abbey. The ceremony is one of hundreds being staged around the world in honour of ‘the Inimitable’.
To mark the occasion, we’ve dug up the Spectator’s obituary of Dickens, published two days after his sudden death in 1870 aged 58.
The legacy of Charles Dickens, The Spectator, 11 June 1870
The greatest humourist whom England ever produced — Shakespeare himself certainly not excepted — is gone: and though we have no intention of making one of those hasty estimates of his great achievements which journalists too often compose in haste to repent at leisure, it seems the fittest of all moments to call attention to one of the least calculable of all effects of a great humourist’s career, the wonderful influence his writings have exerted in softening the lines of demarcation between the different classes of English Society, and the extraordinary stimulus they have thereby given to the various great efforts of the day for ameliorating wretchedness and reclaiming crime.
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