Some people criticised his characters as too genteel, at a time when Dickens in particular was writing about poverty and the grim realities of life in the backstreets of Victorian London.

• 有人批评他的人物都是矫揉造作，附庸风雅之辈，而在同一时期，狄更斯却专门以维多利亚时代伦敦陋街僻巷中平民百姓生活的贫困与严酷的现实为写作题材。