Literary influence of Hamlet a production of "Hamlet" at its core but also dwells on parallels between the Ghost and Wilhelm Meister's dead father. In the early 1850s, in "", Herman Melville focuses on a Hamlet-like character's long development as a writer. Ten years later, Dickens' "Great Expectations" contains many Hamlet-like plot elements: it is driven by revenge actions, contains ghost-like characters (Abel Magwitch and Miss Havisham), and focuses on the hero's guilt. Academic Alexander Welsh notes that "Great Expectations" is an "autobiographical novel" and "anticipates psychoanalytic readings of "Hamlet" itself". About the same time, George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss" was published,
Charles Dickens I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels." Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen". Dickens's second novel, "Oliver Twist" (1839), shocked readers with its