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
Thomas Bentley Thomas Bentley Thomas Bentley (1884 – 1966) was a British film director. He directed 68 films between 1912 and 1941. He directed three films in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, "The Man in the Street" (1926), "The Antidote" (1927), and "Acci-Dental Treatment" (1928). Bentley was born in London and originally trained as an engineer, but went on to become a vaudeville performer well known for impersonating the characters from the novels of Charles Dickens on stage. His directing career in silent films began in 1910 with his adaptations of a number of Dickens' novels to film. After his retirement