Charles Dickens【查尔斯·狄更斯】

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Charles Dickens

In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain.

1812年，查尔斯·狄更斯出生，那一年英国出版了66本小说。

People had been writing novels for a century-most experts date the first novel to

Robinson Crusoe in 1719-but nobody wanted to do it professionally.

人们写小说已经有一个世纪之久了–大部分专家认为第一本小说是1719年的《鲁宾逊漂流记》

–但是没人想专门从事这一行。

The steam-powered printing press was still in its early stages; the literacy rate in England was under 50%.

蒸汽驱动型印刷机还处于早期阶段；英格兰的识字率还不到50%。

Many works of fiction appeared without the names of the authors, often with something like “By a lady.”

许多小说作品都没有作者的名字，经常写着类似“出自一位女士”这样的字眼。

Novels, for the most part, were looked upon as silly, immoral, or just plain bad.

在很大程度上，小说被认为是愚蠢的、不道德的，甚至是恶俗的。

In 1870, when Dickens died, the world mourned him as its first professional writer and 

publisher, famous and well-beloved,

1870年狄更斯去世时，全世界都在哀悼他，因为他是第一个职业作家和出版商，举世闻名而又受人爱戴。

Who had led an explosion in both the publication of novels and their readship and whose

characters-from Oliver Twist to Tiny Tim-were held up as moral touchstones.

他引领了小说的出版和读者人数的爆炸性增长，他笔下的人物从奥利弗·退斯特到小提姆都被视为道德的试金石。

Today Dickens’ greatness is unchallenged.

今天，狄更斯的伟大是毋庸置疑的。

Removing him from the pantheon of English literatur would make about as much sense 

as the Louvre selling off the Mona Lisa.

把他从英国文学的万神殿中移除，其意义就像卢浮宫卖掉《蒙娜丽莎》。

How did Dickens get to the top?

狄更斯是如何登峰造极的呢？

For all the feelings readers attach to stories, literature is a numbers game, and the test of

time is extremely difficult to pass.

关于读者对故事的感受，文学是一种数字游戏，想通过时间的考验是极其困难的。

Some 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian age, from 1837 to 1901;

从1837年到1901年，整个维多利亚时期出版了近六万部小说；

today a casual reader might be able to name a half-dozen of them.

当今随便一位读者可能都能说出其中的六本。

It’s partly ture that Dickens’ style of writing attracted audiences from all walks of life.

在一定程度上可以说狄更斯的写作风格吸引了各行各业的读者。

It’s partly that his writings rode a wave of social, political and scientific progress.

他的著作在一定程度上掀起了一股社会、政治和科学进步的浪潮。

But it’s also that he rewrote the culture of literature and put himself at the center.

但他也改写了文学文化，将自己置于了核心地位。

No one will ever know what mix of talent, ambition, energy and luck made Dickens such a singular writer.

没有人会知道是什么样的天赋、雄心、精力和运气的结合使狄更斯成为如此杰出的作家。

But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, it is possible and important for our

 own culture to understand how he made himself a lasting one.

但随着他200周年诞辰的临近，对我们自己的文化来说，了解他如何让自己经久不衰是可能的，也是重要的。

2018年浙江卷A