Dickens aged 46 in 1858, shortly after completing

Critical opinion on the value of Dickens's novels has shifted significantly between his time and the present. The enormous success of his first work, Pickwick Papers, set a pattern in which his most admired novels were those which seemed to contemporaries to operate within a mode of celebratory comedy. This is not to say that Dickens's first readers did not appreciate the elements of satire and social criticism in his work, but they preferred the novels in which these qualities did not seem to predominate. However, although sales did not falter throughout his career, indeed they increased steadily, critical opinion turned away from the later work, what have come to be called the dark novels, such as Bleak House and Our

1953 words

Citation: Smith, Grahame. "Little Dorrit". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 March 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3937, accessed 26 November 2024.]