Английский язык. Часть I. Коныгина Г.И - 7 стр.

live with. Incompatibility and Dickens's relations with a young actress, Ellen
Ternan, led to his permanent separation from his wife Catherine in 1858, after
the marriage had produced ten children.
   Dickens died very suddenly, dropping from his chair at the dinner table, in the
year 1870 at the comparatively early age of fifty-eight. I___.
   Charles Dickens made an outstanding contribution to classical English litera-
ture. The greatness of Dickens’s talent cannot be overestimated. It is evident that
his literary genius is inexhaustible. J___. Scholars and critics are unanimous that
Charles Dickens is the most popular and widely known British writer the world
over. The superior quality of Dickens’s work made him both one of the great
forces in literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.

Note:

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) is one of the first and greatest masters of the mys-
tery story and the first English novelist to write in this genre. In 1851, he began
an association with Dickens that exerted a formative influence on his career.
Their admiration was mutual. Under Dickens's influence, Collins developed a
talent for characterization, humour, and popular success, while the older writer's
debt to Collins is evident in the more skilful and suspenseful plot structures of
such novels as A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Collins contributed
serials to Dickens's periodicals. His most successful books are The Woman in
White (1860), and The Moonstone (1868). Collins was a much-imitated writer.
The motifs of his books were repeated countless times.

Comprehension Check

Work with a partner. Read the following statements and decide whether
they are true or false according to the text. Correct the false ones.

1. Charles Dickens came from a wealthy aristocratic background.
2. In addition to his regular schoolwork Charles Dickens had instruction at
   home, from private tutors.
3. The family’s increasing poverty forced Dickens out of school to work in a
   shoe-polish factory.
4. The beginning of Dickens's literary career was a complete failure.
5. Charles Dickens turned to novel writing after a successful period as a drama-
   tist.
6. Dickens established the method of publishing novels in serial instalments in
   monthly magazines.
7. After the publication of The Pickwick Papers Dickens failed to produce an-
   other work of comparable literary quality.
8. Dickens incorporated autobiographical elements in his fiction.
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