With the prodigality of a fertile genius, Dickens presented his expectant and enthusiastic public with a new novel on an average of once a year for fourteen years; and, even after that, his productivity did not fall off materially.  The best and most representative of these works are Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844), Dombey and Son (1846-1848), David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Our Mutual Friend (1864).

Of these, David Copperfield is at once Dickens’s favorite work and the one which the world acclaims as his masterpiece.  The novel is in part an autobiography.  Some incidents are taken directly from Dickens’s early experiences and into many more of David’s childish sorrows, boyish dreams, and manly purposes, Dickens has breathed the breath of his own life.  David Copperfield is thus a vitally interesting and living character.  The book contains many of Dickens’s most human men and women.  Petted Little Em’ly with her pathetic tragedy is handled with deep sympathy and true artistic delicacy.  Peggotty and Mrs. Steerforth are admirably drawn and contrasted.  Mrs. Gummidge’s thoughtful care of Peggotty exhibits Dickens’s fine perception of the self-sacrificing spirit among the very poor.  Uriah Heep remains the type of the humble sycophant, and Mr. Micawber, the representative of the man of big words and pompous manners.  These various characters and separate life histories are bound in same way to the central story of David.  General Characteristics.—­England has produced no more popular novelist than Charles Dickens.  His novels offer sound and healthy entertainment, hearty laughter, a wide range of emotions, and a wonderful array of personalities.  He presents the universal physical experiences of life that are understood by all men, and irradiates this life with emotion and romance.  He keeps his readers in an active state of feeling.  They laugh at the broad humor in Sam Weller’s jokes; they chuckle over the sly exposure of Mr. Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit; they weep in Dombey and Son over poor Paul crammed with grown-up learning when he wanted to be just a child; they rejoice over David Copperfield’s escape from his stepfather into the loving arms of whimsical, clever Aunt Betsey Trotwood; they shiver with horror in Our Mutual Friend during the search for floating corpses on the dark river; and they feel more kindly toward the whole world after reading A Christmas Carol and taking Tiny Tim into their hearts.

[Illustration:  FACSIMILE OF MS. OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL.]

Dickens excels in the portrayal of humanity born and reared in poverty and disease.  He grasps the hand of these unfortunates in a brother’s clasp.  He says in effect “I present to you my friends, the beggar, the thief, the outcast.  They are men worth knowing.”  He does not probe philosophically into complex causes of poverty and crime.  His social creed was well formulated by Dowden in these words:  “Banish from earth some few monsters of selfishness, malignity, and hypocrisy, set to rights a few obvious imperfections in the machinery of society, inspire all men with a cheery benevolence, and everything will go well with this excellent world of ours.”