4 - The Tide Turns (1940–1959)

Summary

IN REVIEWING GEORGE FORD'S Dickens and His Readers in 1955, Edgar Johnson observed that, “Few things are more dangerous to an author's later fame” than for him “to have won great acclaim and, worse yet, popularity in his lifetime.” That nearly guarantees a negative reaction from the next generation, often for no better reason than to express its independence from their elders. But often, Johnson says, “some decades later still, the critical tide turns again, and something like the old reputation may be restored, even enhanced by subtler shades of appreciation than it had formerly enjoyed” (“Turning Tides” 644). The seminal revaluations of Orwell and Wilson in 1940 ushered in just such a reversal in Dickens's fortunes among the critics — a reversal that began during the tumultuous years when Europe was ablaze with war, and that has lasted, with few exceptions, into the twenty-first century.

As had occurred during the First World War, after hostilities began again in 1939, the British public was encouraged to seek solace in the pages of a Dickens novel in times of great stress. In “Return to Dickens,” an article that appeared in a 1940 issue of the St. Martin's Review, the publication of St. Martin's Church, official church of the Admiralty, Bernard Darwin recommends Dickens as an escape from the harsh realities of war. Darwin calls the novelist “an old and familiar friend” (30).