It seems important to emphasize the fact that Charles Dickens was in a very special sense a social reformer. It was not simply that he loathed shams. With him it was not merely a case of creating characters at which the whole world laughed, humbugs who excited its wrath and impostors who provoked its derision. He was at heart and by conviction a reformer. He looked out upon his age and found corruption in public places and cynicism displayed towards the vital things in national life and...
