DICKENS’S LETTER REVEALS ATTITUDE TO JEWISH PEOPLE
NZPA Special Correspondent LONDON, Feb. 27. Some early letters of Charles Dickens, ' which have been discovered by a resident of Shootup Hill,' in north-west London, Mr Phineas May, reveal what the famous novelist really thought about Jews and his muchdiscussed character, Fagin, in “ Oliver Twist.” In a letter to Mr May’s great grandmother, Eliza Davies, written on July 10, 1863, from his home at Gad’s Hill, Dickens said: “ I must take leave to say that if there be any general feeling on the part of the Jewish people that I have done them what you describe as ‘ a great wrong,’ they are a far less sensible, a far less just, and a far less good-tempered people than I have always supposed them to be. Fagin, in ‘Oliver Twist,’ is a Jew because it unfortunately was true of the time to which that story refers that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew.” Commenting upon Mrs Davies’s reply to this letter. Dickens said: “ I received your letter with the greatest pleasure and I hope (as I have always been in my heart) to be the best of friends with, the Jewish people.”
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 27018, 1 March 1949, Page 5
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200DICKENS’S LETTER REVEALS ATTITUDE TO JEWISH PEOPLE Otago Daily Times, Issue 27018, 1 March 1949, Page 5
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