Two perfect idlers, to liven up their laziness, go on a journey, giving them unprecedented adventures. Do they actually happen...? Reality becomes something wonderful by virtue of the imagination.

"In the autumn month of September 1857, two apprentices of laziness, exhausted from the long hot summer and the work time, the heat that he had brought with him, fled from their employer ..." Doesn't that sound wonderful? And doesn't it get even more wonderful when you know that the employer was literature, and that the two escaping apprentices were a Mr. Collins and a Mr. Dickens?

The Lazy Journey of Two Idle Apprentices was co-written by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and features two characters (Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle) who mirror both of them. The first saw idleness as doing nothing useful, while the second, as doing nothing at all. Narrated over the course of what were originally five installments in the same issue of Household Words magazine and put together in this now-released little book, Dickens depicts an "idle" (but actually quite hectic) vacation period , with long walks, excursions and explorations of hostels and other places. It's fascinating how the ups and downs of their relationship play out as they traveled across the north of England, gently caricaturing themselves and their relationship. In the course, he also includes two long stand-alone stories about gothic ghosts, one that appears to be primarily by Collins and one that appears to be primarily by Dickens, peppered with plenty of humorous and fun moments, without drama albeit with concern for poverty in the one that many British people lived in industrial cities and that, quickly and easily, the journey comes to an end.

Dickens separated from his wife in 1858. In the Victorian era, divorce was unthinkable, particularly for famous people like him. Nevertheless, he continued to support her and the house for the next 20 years, until the day she passed away. An indication of the marriage crisis occurred when, in 1855, he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell.

Maria was also married at this time, but she had changed a great deal from Dickens's romantic memory of her. From then on, the change in the character of Charles Dickens was so remarkable that several of his friends declared that they did not recognize him as the person they had known. Despite everything, Dickens continued to write and give lectures and took refuge in the home of his friend Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), the creator of the mystery and the detective novel, playwright and author of short stories. They collaborated hand in hand in magazines and editions. The friendship between the two would last a lifetime. They came to write works together (among others and in the same year as this novel, In frozen seas (1857), co-written with Charles Dickens) and ideas for their respective novels were recommended. Collins wrote his best known works from this relationship, such as The Lady in White (1860), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). In addition, Collins, in his work as editor, was of Dickens's Household Words, and several of his novels would be published in installments in the weekly All the Year Round, edited by the author of Oliver Twist, which he would eventually edit and publishing his friend's works on his own. This same year, Dickens wrote Little Dorrit (1857) where he elaborates extensive criticisms of the Victorian institutional apparatus; the double attack with the patent inefficiency and corruption of the offices and with the irregular speculation of the markets. Seven years later his masterpiece, David Copperfield, sees the light.

Author

Charles John Huffam Dickens (Portsmouth, England, February 7, 1812 - Gads Hill Place, England, June 9, 1870). It is one of the greatest glories of English letters, the main one of the Victorian era and one of the best known in world literature. He was a master of the narrative genre, to which he printed certain doses of humor and irony, while practicing a sharp social criticism. In his work, the descriptions of people and places stand out, both real and imaginary characteristics that are usually amalgamated in his productions, which are adorned with a true wealth of imagination, which Taine observed in his time, and also nuanced with such emotion which is extremely moving. As for humor, he is an indisputable teacher; he harshly lashes out at the defects of the English society of the time, squandering a fine and indisputable grace.

His novels and short stories enjoyed great popularity during the writer's lifetime, and are still continually edited and adapted for film today. Dickens wrote serialized novels like the one we now present to him at Alcalá Grupo Editorial, the usual format in fiction at the time, for the simple reason that not everyone had the financial resources to buy a book, and each new installment of his stories was awaited with great enthusiasm by his readers, national and international.

His life changed profoundly when his father was denounced for non-payment of his debts and imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtors Prison. Most of the family moved to live with Mr. Dickens in jail, a possibility then established by law, which allowed the defaulter's family to share their cell. At the age of twelve, the future novelist was deemed old enough to start work, and thus began his working life, on ten-hour days a day at Warren's boot-blacking factory, a shoe polish factory, located near the current London Charing Cross railway station.

One of the best drawn characters in his novels is London itself. From the bars on the outskirts of the city to the banks of the Thames, every aspect of the British capital is described by someone who truly loved it and who spent many hours walking its streets.

Most of Dickens's masterpieces were written as monthly or weekly installments in such newspapers as Master Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, and were later reprinted in books. These installments made the stories cheaper and more accessible.

Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social criticism. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Through his works, Dickens maintained an empathy for the common man and a skepticism for the bourgeois family. Most of his novels are related to social realism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives (for example, in the industrial networks in Hard Times and hypocritical and exclusive class codes in Our mutual friend).

Dickens also employs incredible coincidences (for example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of a high-society family who randomly rescues him from a dangerous group of pickpockets). For Dickens this was an index of a humanitarian Christianity that led him to believe that good always wins out in the end, even in unexpected ways. By age 27 he had already achieved his status as the most popular novelist in England.

At a time when Britain was the world's greatest political and economic power, Dickens highlighted the lives of the forgotten poor at the heart of the empire. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues - such as hygiene and workhouses - but his fiction was probably the most powerful thing to change public opinion on class inequalities, he described the exploitation and repression of the poor and condemned the institutions public officials that allowed the existence of such abuses.

Cedric Fernsby. Translation.