Definition of "Dickensian"

As though in expiation of their sires' wealth, schoolboys often had to live in conditions that would have disgraced a Dickensian workhouse.

1988, Cecil D. Eby, “Playing the Game”, in The Road to Armageddon: The Martial Spirit in English Popular Literature 1870–1914, Durham, N.C., London: Duke University Press, page 89

As earlier implied, the planet is threatened on three major fronts: […] (3) by a Dickensian world of wretched excess and wretched despair.

1993, William Sloane Coffin, “A Vision of the Future”, in A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches, Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, page 10

Down in the subway under the roundabout the looming social ordeal started to weigh down on me, […] By the time I pressed a huge and over-polished brass bell I'd devolved into a shifty-eyed, cinder-cheeked Dickensian urchin, and when the door opened I half expected to see Mrs Bridges throw up her fat, floury hands and scream for the cook's boy.

2001 February, Tim Moore, “Prologue”, in Frost on My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Griffin, St. Martin’s Press, page 2

Leaning against piracy fits in with China's desire to cast off its image of a country where exploited workers toil for a pittance in Dickensian factories that turn the air and water black with the pollution they discharge.

2008 September 15, Alan Wheatley, “China getting higher marks for tackling piracy”, in Reuters‎, archived from the original on 23 April 2010