George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen bare-footed stable boy, he became the richest man in Canada and closely associated with George V, whose wife, Queen Mary, was a lifelong friend and confidante of the second Lady Mount Stephen. In 1829, Stephen was born at Dufftown, Banffshire, in a cottage built by his grandfather. He was the son of William Stephen (b. 1801), a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith, a crofter at Knockando, Moray. His mother was a first cousin of the philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' book, Nicholas Nickleby. Stephen began life as a boy running
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens the behaviour of races to be "fixed"; rather his appeal to "civilization" suggests not biological fixity but the possibility of alteration. However, "Dickens views of racial others, most fully developed in his short fiction, indicate that for him 'savages' functioned as a handy foil against which British national identity could emerge." The "Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature" similarly notes that while Dickens praised middle-class values, William Oddie argues that Dickens's racism "grew progressively more illiberal over the course of his career" particularly after the Indian rebellion. Grace Moore, on the other hand, argues that Dickens, a staunch abolitionist and opponent