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NOTES
Charles Dickens
1. In Charles Dickens: The Progress of a Radical (1937).
2. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a romantic novel and play (1905), the first of several
stories featuring the adventures during the French Revolution of the suave English aristocrat Sir Percy
Blakeney, who rescued those destined for the guillotine. Their author, Baroness Orczy (Mrs. Montagu
Barstow, 1865–1947), was born in Hungary.
3. Carmagnole was a worker's jacket originating in Carmagnola, Piedmont. It became
fashionable among French revolutionaries and was then used to describe a song and a wild dance.
The first verse of the song pilloried "Madame Veto"—Queen Marie Antoinette—who was accused of
influencing Louis XVI to exercise this right.
4. Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) was the author of a number of works of selfimprovement;
the best known is Self-Help: with Illustrations of Conduct & Perseverance (1859).
By far the most successful of many such books of its time, it and the attitudes it represented have been
much castigated.
5. On his return from a visit to the Soviet Union, André Gide (1869–1951), prolific
French author and editor, wrote a somewhat disillusioned account of his experiences there, Retour de
l'URSS (1936).
6. Bartram wrote novels and folklore verses. The People of Clopton: A Poaching
Romance was published in 1897.
7. Orley Farm (1862) by Anthony Trollope (1815–1882).
8. "Ye Mariners of England," by Thomas Campbell (1777–1844); "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892).
9. Orwell probably had in mind Bransby Williams (1870–1961), the "Hamlet of the
Halls," whose impersonations of Dickens's characters and incidents were popular in music halls and
on records; they anticipated the one-man Dickens recitals by legitimate actors in the latter part of the
twentieth century.
10. Frank Fairleigh, or Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil (1850) was by Francis
Edward Smedley (1818–1864). Mr Verdant Green is a trilogy by Cuthbert Bede (Edward Bradley,
1827–1889), made up of The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman (1853), The
Further Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, an Oxford Undergraduate (1854), and Mr Verdant Green
Married and Done For (1857). The books were frequently reprinted, with illustrations by the author.
Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures (1846; reprinted from Punch) was by Douglas Jerrold, a prolific