All of Dickens’s major works were published before his death in 1870. So, to answer your question, Origin, yes. Not only are they good references to Victorian life, they would be fresh on the minds of British society in 1871.
Some other authors I recommend:
Any of the Bronte sisters.. William Butler Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain.. Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, holmes!) Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island), Henrik Ibsen (I personally recommend A Doll’s House. It is an excellent work if you are wanting to play a female character that will go against the whim’s of society.) Lesse.. Alfred Tennyson. Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience outlines the blossoming thought that questioning authority was healthy for a population to be successful. Its actually pretty good because alot of people in Britian who were staunchly opposed to the American Revolution were swayed by this work. Also check out John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe (so morbid), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.. Oh, and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was making a huge ruckus amongst the scientific and religious world.
There are so many more than this. But these are a couple of my favorites. British poetry was almost limitless during the Victorian Era.