Charles Dickens
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Charles Dickens’
English lawyer Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine in place of a French aristocrat.
At the height (or depth) of the French Revolution, Sydney Carton has exchanged places and names with aristocrat Charles Darnay, winning just enough time for Darnay and his family to be smuggled to safety in England. As Carton is led to the guillotine, a seamstress condemned to the same fate shares a confidence with him.
Mr Snawley has two stepsons he would like to offload, and Mr Squeers seems just the right person to help him.
Mr Wackford Squeers, headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire, is in London looking for clients. He is approached at the Saracen’s Head by a Mr Snawley, step-father to two small boys, who is looking for a cheap, far-off boarding school with none of those ill-judged holidays ‘that unsettle children’s minds so’.
Kate Nickleby must bite her lip as she experiences snobbery for the first time.
After falling on hard times, Kate Nickleby, daughter of a country gentleman, has gratefully accepted a job in a dressmaker’s. But a mother and daughter have come in, and being in an ill temper have chosen to take it out on the new assistant.
Even as a child, King Alfred couldn’t resist a challenge.
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex in southern England, from 871 to 899. By reclaiming the Midlands and East Anglia from pagan Danish invaders, he took a giant step towards the formation of a Kingdom of England, and ensured it would be a civilised, enlightened, Christian land.
The Wars of the Roses pitted two royal houses against each other for the crown of England.
Henry VI was a descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; his closest relative was Richard, Duke of York. From 1455 to 1471, the two royal families, the Red Rose and the White, strove bitterly for the crown of England.
Charles Dickens chastises those who alter the plots of classic tales to push some social agenda of their own.
Charles Dickens’s friend, the cartoonist George Cruikshank, rewrote various fairytales as propaganda for teetotalism. Dickens, however, soon appreciated the dangers in allowing social activists to indoctrinate children like this.