Reply #37: when his father was imprisoned for debt, Charles wound up working 10-hours a day

[Hannah Bell]

in a London boot-blacking factory located near to the present day Charing Cross station, when he was twelve.

Resentment of his situation and the conditions working-class people lived under became major themes of his works.

Dickens wrote, "No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support from anyone that I can call to mind, so help me God!"

http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/biography/28/Charles_Dickens/.

Dickens had few dealings with flesh and blood Jews until 1860 when he sold his home, Tavistock House to a Mr. Davis, a Jewish banker. His journal entries are initially deprecatory; the subsequent conduct of the banker and the ease with which the transaction was effected caused him to rethink and revise his whole position in this area.

Dickens' response to the (mild) criticism of Fagin emanating from the Mrs Davis (the wife of the self-same banker), writing in the Jewish Chronicle, is revealing:

"Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew ... and secondly, that he is called 'the Jew' not because of his religion but because of his race."

It should be noted that in an 1867 revision of the text, most of the Jewish references were excised.

Fagin should also be balanced against the sympathetic portrayal of the Jew Riah in Our Mutual Friend, his last complete novel. It has been argued by some that this represents a process of change in Dickens' approach to issues relating to ethnicity.

Mrs. Davis was pleased with Dickens' creation of a good Jew and sent him a copy of a new translation of the Hebrew Bible. Dickens was gratitude personified in his response, asserting:

"There is nothing but good will left between me and a People for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not wilfully have given an offence or done an injustice for any worldly consideration. Believe me, Very faithfully yours, Charles Dickens."