How did dickens change literature in the victorian era?
By publishing his works in a vvery accessible way – and endlessly promoting himself in readinjgs and personal appearnaces. His magazine Household Words provided a platform for his work and made it accessible to an audience that would not ordinarily have posessed any books (other than the Bible). The cliff hanger format so as to encourage folk to buy the next instalment accounts for some of the strange constructions of the books (not unique to Dickens of course – Jane Austen’s novels were often published in volumes). He championed other writers like Mrs Gaskell whose novels about Manchester, poverty and prostitution, like Dickens’ own work were aimed at pricking the consciences of the well-to-do to and acting as an apologist for the working classes for whom there was no welfare state. Although he had very serious intent – this does not mean his books needed to be dull – his characterisations are larger than life – like the unfogettable Fagin, Miss Havisham, Lady Dedlock and Uriah Heep o
