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The publication of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Pendennis (1848–50) triggered a dispute over the professionalism of authorship in mid-19th-century England. The satirical portraits of literary men in Thackeray’s novel denigrated their privileges and abilities, resulting in a “Dignity of Literature” debate that was conducted via newspaper articles between Thackeray and Charles Dickens’s close friend John Forster. Although Dickens was not directly involved, critics have regarded this debate as helping to crystalize his ideas about the professionalization of literary men. David Copperfield (1849–50), whose protagonist eventually discovers his vocation as a successful author, is often considered to be Dickens’s response to the debate. Richard Salmon, for example, claims that the novel makes “a significant contribution to the mid-nineteenth-century debate on ‘The Dignity of Literature,’” by reifying Dickens’s ideal of authorship where labor and professionalism coalesce (49).
No other Dickens novel can match the significant attention given to David Copperfield in discussions of his perceptions of the literary profession. However, Dickens’s fight for the dignity of literary professionals did not end here. His efforts in the 1850s included co-founding the Guild of Literature and Art and reforming the Royal Literary Fund.1 Inevitably, his concerns about the literary profession found their expression in his works even after David Copperfield, with one of the most significant being Hard Times (1854). This novel has not been construed as a critique of the profession of authorship largely because, unlike David Copperfield, it contains no authorial character. Nonetheless, in the context of the mid-19th-century discourse on professionalism, Thomas Gradgrind emerges as a representative of contemporary fact-oriented professionals and as the antithesis of fiction writers. In this way, the novel highlights both the absence and the significance of fiction writers. The present essay will shed light on this neglected facet of the novel while considering the context of contemporary professionals, which has been described as “very much a Victorian creation, brought into being to serve the needs of an industrial society” (Reader 2). In so doing, the essay will reveal Dickens’s views of both Victorian professionals in general and literary professionals, especially novelists, in particular.2
1. Self-Sacrificing Professionals and Self-Interested Entrepreneurs
The Industrial Revolution led to the socio-economic rise of the English middle classes, enhancing their class consciousness and their...