Charles Dickens 'rhetorical exuberance': Harold Skimpole in "Bleak House" is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in "David Copperfield". Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep. Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks". One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to
Charles Wilkins (writer) Charles Wilkins (writer) Charles Wilkins (1831–1913) was a writer and editor. Wilkins was born in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, but lived for most of his life in Merthyr Tydfil, where he worked first as a postmaster's clerk to his father, and as a librarian for twenty years. As a writer, Wilkins' published output includes "The History of the Literature of Wales from 1300 to 1650" (1884), "The History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate and Other Trades of Wales" (1903), and "The History of Merthyr Tydfil" (1867 and 1908). He also wrote extensively for newspapers, and from 1882 to 1887 was editor for