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Review of A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens

My actual edition of this book is part of “The Works of Charles Dickens, with Illustrations, Cleartype Edition, Books, Inc; 1868 (date is questionable)”…I hestitated to turn down corners, but did one or two.
If only history could always be this fun. Oh me, what do you get when you add Charles Dickens + English history? Truly, a history for the people, sir! In more ways than one!

How so, you ask?

1) Totally readable. Written for children. True, not most of our poor children reared on a steady diet of Captain Underpants, but perhaps not as difficult for the vocabulary challenged as other works by same author. In fact, one source says this work was used as curricula in British schools until WWII. Lucky little brats.

2) Charles Dickens, always a champion of "the people" writes this book as a chronology of English monarchs beginning from ancient times (50 B.C.) to James the 2nd (1688). As such, although we are given a glimpse of the Kings and such, more, we are also given a glimpse of how said Kings affected the lives of their subjects. True, never is it much a chronicle of individual commoners as it is of the Kings, but we are shown what life was like under each Merry (or not so Merry) Monarch. Sadly, it's not a pretty picture. Not many of them were truly Merry. If they were, it was at the expense of the people.

3) Reads like a novel, although it is said to be fairly accurate. Of course it doesn't give all the details (that would fill volumes) but it is always interesting and fast-paced. That’s fantastic as history, at least for me.

4) Bloody, sir. Enough to happily employ the mind of any imaginative (but not overly-sensitive) child of 11 or so. Good gracious, the times were abominable for blood. Burnings. Beatings. Quarterings. Drawings. Hangings. Torturings. Incarceratings. You name it. They were pretty horrible. Imagine a ferocious Irish Chieftain biting off the nose of his dead enemy in glee. Egad. That said, if I may interject a personal opinion, they were no worse than we are sometimes. Sure, we don’t go for physical torture and mass peasant killing these days so much, but we have created all sorts of ways to emotionally and mentally torture each other and especially ourselves. If our day were written of candidly, perhaps the deeds told would be more of how we poison our bodies with anti-food, or our spirits with pornography, or our minds with obsessions for perfection or unattainable realities, or each other with coldness and apathy and judgement. Today’s ills seem certainly a more personal picture, but nonetheless earth-life is as sad as it ever was. I don’t know which I would choose had I the choice. (That sounds really doomsday, didn’t mean to, because I do think the world is still pretty awesome, but was just comparing the times.)

5) Um, people, it’s written by Charles Dickens. Okay, I know some of you aren’t as in love with him as I am (poor you!) but, ‘pon my soul, it’s good reading.

Here is a fun anecdote on how Britain became a Christian nation:

Chapter II “Ancient England Under the Early Saxons”

“After the death of ETHELBERT, EDWIN, King of Northumbria, who was such a good king….held a great council to consider whether he and his people should all be Christians or not. It was decided that they should be. COIFI, the chief priest of the old religion, made a great speech on the occasion. In this discourse, he told the people that he had found out the old gods to be impostors. ‘I am quite satisfied of it,’ he said. ‘Look at me! I have been serving them all my life, and they have done nothing for me; whereas, if they had been really powerful, they could not have decently done less, in return for all I have done for them, than make my fortune. As they have never made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are impostors!’ When this singular priest had finished speaking, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance, mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the people to the temple, and flung his lance against it as an insult. From that time, the Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons, and became their faith.”

All in all, wonderful. Truly had FUN reading it, and history + me doesn’t usually equally fun.