Charles Dickens to discuss them. "Nicholas Nickleby" (1838–39), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (184041) and, finally, his first historical novel, "Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty", as part of the "Master Humphrey's Clock" series (1840–41), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. In the midst of all his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in "Oliver Twist". Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerge—in Broadstairs he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's
Charles Dickens of though some claim he may have denied his divinity. Notwithstanding, Dickens has been characterized as a professing Christian. His son, Henry Fielding Dickens, described Dickens as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early 1840s, Dickens had shown an interest in Unitarian Christianity, and Robert Browning remarked that “Mr. Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian.” Writer Gary Colledge, however, asserted that he "never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism". He also wrote a religious work called "The Life of Our Lord" (1849), which was a short book about the life of Jesus Christ, written with the purpose