London in the late 19th century
The Victorian period (1837-1901) not only witnessed enormous technological, social, and political advances but also the defeat of many old habits of thinking and ways of living.
When Charles Dickens was writing, London was going through drastic social and industrial change. When he was born in 1812, London was still a city running on horse power. Horse drawn carriages where the main source of transportation in the city and around the country. When he died in 1870, England was a full-blown industrial machine and the steam engine and train tracks connected city to country and made travel more convient. The growing urbanization forced Dickens to invent words or reinvent definitions to fit what it was he wanted to convey. Because of the wide audience that Dickens works reached, many of his lexical changes and new words seeped into the everyday vernacular of London and becomes a main stay in the language. We still use of these words today. The following pages will attempt to illustrate the immense influence Dickens had on Victorian vocabulary and the influence he still has on Present Day English. |
The city scene above, allows you to see the type of urban environment most Victorian writers where living and working (ie. Dickens). You will notice the horse drawn carriage riding next to one the early prototypes of urban transportation mass transportation.
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