Charles Dickens scenes in "The Pickwick Papers" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that "Great Expectations" was more seditious than Marx's "Das Kapital". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes ("Bleak House", 1853; "Little Dorrit", 1857; "Our Mutual Friend", 1865), not only underscored his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured
Charles Edwin Bentley future work along this line. Bentley published extensively. Two of his most important papers were "The Application of Comparative Anatomy to Dentistry” and “Contact Points of the Medical and Dental Profession". Bentley was chairman of the Child Welfare Exhibit on Dentistry. He long served as the secretary of Provident Hospital. He was the first president of the Equal Opportunity League of Chicago. He was a charter member of the Niagara Movement, and of the directory of the NAACP. In 1898, Bentley married Florence Lewis, who was for some years the literary editor of the Philadelphia Press. Charles Edwin Bentley Charles