Dickens’s social novels can be surely called an encyclopedia of English life contemporary to the author.
In one of his letters to John Forster, Dickens wrote that he could not express how much he needed the streets of London; he admitted that there was really some magnificent power of London over him.
The action of almost all Dickens’s novels takes place in London. Moreover, they can not be imagined without descriptions of London streets, its noise, its colourful & variable folk. Dickens managed to search & to describe all the aspects of life of his favourite city— all its smart & tidy parts & the poorest blocks. A subtle artist, he managed to pick up all the details & all the changes that took place in London.
The ruin of petty owner in the context of developing capitalism—is one of the sides of contemporary life constantly depicted by Dickens. Prevailing of powerful official City over poor shops as “Wooden Midshipman”—is the theme not only of “Dombey & son”. The fate of an old antiquarian & his granddaughter Nelly in “Old Curiosity Shop” & countless petty shopkeepers & craftsmen acting in Dickens’s novels reflects typical situation for post reform England , the largest empire of the capitalistic world of the XIX century.

Charles Dikens

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