The Life of Our Lord, Charles Dickens
The Life of Our Lord, Charles Dickens
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The Life of Our Lord
Written for His Children During the Years 1846 to 1849

Author: Charles Dickens

Narrator: David Aikman

Unabridged: 1 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Oasis Audio

Published: 10/01/2010


Synopsis

“I am very anxious that you should know something about the history of Jesus Christ. For everyone ought to know about him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was.”— Charles DickensCharles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord around the same time he was finishing David Copperfield, but to listeners raised on a diet of Dickensian wit and indignation, his rendering of Jesus' life may come as something of a surprise.Dickens approaches his subject with simple reverence, retelling the New Testament in a manner suitable for young children – who were, in fact, his only intended audience. Originally written for his own children, it wasn't until the death of Dickens' last living son that the manuscript was finally published in 1934.

About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, where his father was a naval pay clerk. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, near Rochester, another port town. He received some education at a small private school but this was curtailed when his father's fortunes declined.

When Dickens was ten, the family moved to Camden Town, and this proved the beginning of a long, difficult period. When he had just turned twelve, Dickens was sent to work for a manufacturer of boot blacking, where for the better part of a year he labored for ten hours a day, an unhappy experience that instilled him with a sense of having been abandoned by his family. Around the same time Dickens's father was jailed for debt in the Marshalsea Prison, where he remained for fourteen weeks. After some additional schooling, Dickens worked as a clerk in a law office and taught himself shorthand; this qualified him to begin working in 1831 as a reporter in the House of Commons, where he became known for the speed with which he took down speeches.

By 1833 Dickens was publishing humorous sketches of London life in the Monthly Magazine, which were collected in book form as Sketches by "Boz". These were followed by the publication in installments of the comic adventures that became The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, whose unprecedented popularity made the twenty-five-year-old author a national figure. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, who would bear him ten children over a period of fifteen years. Dickens's energies enabled him to lead an active family and social life, including an indulgence in elaborate amateur theatricals, while maintaining a literary productiveness of astonishing proportions. He characteristically wrote his novels for serial publication and was himself the editor of many of the periodicals in which they appeared, including Bentley's Miscellany, the Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. Among his close associates were his future biographer John Forster and the younger Wilkie Collins, with whom he collaborated on fictional and dramatic works. In rapid succession he published Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, sometimes working on several novels simultaneously.

Dickens's celebrity led to a tour of the United States in 1842. There he met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and other literary figures, and was received with an enthusiasm that was dimmed somewhat by the criticisms Dickens expressed in his American Notes and in the American chapters of Martin Chuzzlewit. The appearance of A Christmas Carol in 1843 sealed his position as the most widely popular writer of his time; it became an annual tradition for him to write a story for the season, of which the most memorable were The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. He continued to produce novels at only a slightly diminished rate, publishing Dombey and Son in 1848 and David Copperfield in 1850.

From this point on, his novels tended to be more elaborately constructed and harsher and less buoyant in tone than his earlier works. These late novels include Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Our Mutual Friend, published in 1865, was his last completed novel and perhaps the most somber and savage of them all. Dickens had separated from his wife in 1858-he had become involved a year earlier with a young actress named Ellen Ternan-and the ensuing scandal had alienated him from many of his former associates and admirers. He was weakened by years of overwork and by a near-fatal railroad disaster during the writing of Our Mutual Friend. Nevertheless, he embarked on a series of public readings, including a return visit to America in 1867, which further eroded his health. A final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a crime novel much influenced by Wilkie Collins, was left unfinished upon his death on June 9,1870, at the age of 58.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ruby on January 12, 2022

Not very interesting or original, but cool to see how influential Jesus was in Dickens's personal life.......more

Goodreads review by ♥Milica♥ on April 09, 2025

"No one ever lived, who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in anyway ill or miserable, as he was." I had no idea Dickens even wrote this, until the trailer for The King of Kings (now one of my most anticipated movies) came out. That was when I decided......more

Goodreads review by Lyn on October 11, 2009

I've heard that critics hated this book, and I'm not at all surprised. This book should not be stacked up against Dickens' other works of art. It was clearly never meant to be a great literary masterpiece, and you can't expect many critics to get that. This is simply a father explaining the life of......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on March 26, 2020

I had never heard of this until my mom passed her copy on to me this year. But then, that was the intent! According to the introduction, Dickens didn't want this book published, and he didn't want it known as a work of Dickens. He wrote it to instruct his children about the life of Jesus Christ at t......more

Goodreads review by Cleo on December 12, 2024

What a lovely little book where Dickens re-wrote the Gospels for his children. You can tell by his emphasis that he is trying to impart kindness and understanding and forgiveness as exemplified by Jesus. "Remember! --- It is Christianity TO DO GOOD always -- even to those who do evil to us. It is chr......more