Dickens captured the popular imagination as no other novelist had done, and notwithstanding some murmurs against his sentimentality, sensationalism and his inclination to portray women as innocents or grotesques, he was held in high critical esteem. Modern critics have tended to praise the complexity of his late somber works, rather than the high spirited humors and genius for caricature, traditionally called ‘Dickensian’.The sensitive human and ...
