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Beginning of a literary career

Novels from the pickwick papers to martin chuzzlewit.

• The invention of the Christmas books
• The product of his age
• Dombey and Son and David Copperfield
• Novels from Bleak House to Little Dorrit
• Marital unhappiness: Catherine Dickens and Ellen Ternan
• Public readings
• Final novels: A Tale of Two Cities , Great Expectations , and Our Mutual Friend
• Farewell readings
• Critical opinion and scholarship

Why is Charles Dickens important?

What was charles dickens’s early life like.

Charles Dickens

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• Spartacus Educational - Biography of Charles Dickens
• Historic UK - The Life of Charles Dickens
• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - Charles Dickens
• Humanities LibreTexts - Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
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• Charles Dickens - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Charles Dickens - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

What did Charles Dickens write?

Among Charles Dickens’s many works are the novels The Pickwick Papers (1837),  Oliver Twist (1838),  A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), and  Great Expectations (1861). In addition, he worked as a journalist, writing numerous items on political and social affairs.

Charles Dickens is considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. He enjoyed a wide popularity, his work appealing to the simple and the sophisticated. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his view of society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him one of the great forces in 19th-century  literature .

Charles Dickens’s father, a clerk, was well paid, but his failings often brought the family trouble. In 1824 Charles was withdrawn from school and did manual factory work, and his father went to prison for debt . Those shocks deeply affected Charles. After a brief return to the classroom, his schooling ended at age 15.

Charles Dickens (born February 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire , England—died June 9, 1870, Gad’s Hill, near Chatham, Kent) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era . His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol , David Copperfield , Bleak House , A Tale of Two Cities , Great Expectations , and Our Mutual Friend .

Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated , to the poor and to the queen, and technological developments as well as the qualities of his work enabled his fame to spread worldwide very quickly. His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work that were given less weight by his contemporaries, his popularity has never ceased. The most abundantly comic of English authors, he was much more than a great entertainer. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his apprehension of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in 19th-century literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.

(Read G.K. Chesterton’s 1929 Britannica essay on Dickens.)

Early years

Dickens left Portsmouth in infancy. His happiest childhood years were spent in Chatham (1817–22), an area to which he often reverted in his fiction. From 1822 he lived in London , until, in 1860, he moved permanently to a country house, Gad’s Hill, near Chatham. His origins were middle class, if of a newfound and precarious respectability; one grandfather had been a domestic servant, and the other an embezzler. His father, a clerk in the navy pay office, was well paid, but his extravagance and ineptitude often brought the family to financial embarrassment or disaster. (Some of his failings and his ebullience are dramatized in Mr. Micawber in the partly autobiographical David Copperfield .)

In 1824 the family reached bottom. Charles, the eldest son, had been withdrawn from school and was now set to manual work in a factory, and his father went to prison for debt. These shocks deeply affected Charles. Though abhorring this brief descent into the working class, he began to gain that sympathetic knowledge of its life and privations that informed his writings. Also, the images of the prison and of the lost, oppressed, or bewildered child recur in many novels. Much else in his character and art stemmed from this period, including, as the 20th-century novelist Angus Wilson has argued, his later difficulty, as man and author, in understanding women: this may be traced to his bitter resentment against his mother, who had, he felt, failed disastrously at this time to appreciate his sufferings. She had wanted him to stay at work when his father’s release from prison and an improvement in the family’s fortunes made the boy’s return to school possible. Happily, the father’s view prevailed.

His schooling, interrupted and unimpressive, ended at 15. He became a clerk in a solicitor’s office, then a shorthand reporter in the lawcourts (thus gaining a knowledge of the legal world often used in the novels), and finally, like other members of his family, a parliamentary and newspaper reporter. These years left him with a lasting affection for journalism and contempt both for the law and for Parliament. His coming to manhood in the reformist 1830s, and particularly his working on the Liberal Benthamite Morning Chronicle (1834–36), greatly affected his political outlook. Another influential event now was his rejection as suitor to Maria Beadnell because his family and prospects were unsatisfactory; his hopes of gaining and chagrin at losing her sharpened his determination to succeed. His feelings about Beadnell then and at her later brief and disillusioning reentry into his life are reflected in David Copperfield ’s adoration of Dora Spenlow and in the middle-aged Arthur Clennam ’s discovery (in Little Dorrit ) that Flora Finching , who had seemed enchanting years ago, was “diffuse and silly,” that Flora, “whom he had left a lily, had become a peony.”

Much drawn to the theatre , Dickens nearly became a professional actor in 1832. In 1833 he began contributing stories and descriptive essays to magazines and newspapers; these attracted attention and were reprinted as Sketches by “Boz” (February 1836). The same month, he was invited to provide a comic serial narrative to accompany engravings by a well-known artist; seven weeks later the first installment of The Pickwick Papers appeared. Within a few months Pickwick was the rage and Dickens the most popular author of the day. During 1836 he also wrote two plays and a pamphlet on a topical issue (how the poor should be allowed to enjoy the Sabbath) and, resigning from his newspaper job, undertook to edit a monthly magazine , Bentley’s Miscellany , in which he serialized Oliver Twist (1837–39). Thus, he had two serial installments to write every month. Already the first of his nine surviving children had been born; he had married (in April 1836) Catherine, eldest daughter of a respected Scottish journalist and man of letters, George Hogarth.

For several years his life continued at this intensity. Finding serialization congenial and profitable, he repeated the Pickwick pattern of 20 monthly parts in Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39); then he experimented with shorter weekly installments for The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Exhausted at last, he then took a five-month vacation in America, touring strenuously and receiving quasi-royal honours as a literary celebrity but offending national sensibilities by protesting against the absence of copyright protection. A radical critic of British institutions, he had expected more from “the republic of my imagination,” but he found more vulgarity and sharp practice to detest than social arrangements to admire. Some of these feelings appear in American Notes (1842) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44).

His writing during these prolific years was remarkably various and, except for his plays, resourceful. Pickwick began as high-spirited farce and contained many conventional comic butts and traditional jokes; like other early works, it was manifestly indebted to the contemporary theatre, the 18th-century English novelists, and a few foreign classics, notably Don Quixote . But, besides giving new life to old stereotypes , Pickwick displayed, if sometimes in embryo, many of the features that were to be blended in varying proportions throughout his fiction: attacks, satirical or denunciatory, on social evils and inadequate institutions; topical references; an encyclopaedic knowledge of London (always his predominant fictional locale); pathos; a vein of the macabre; a delight in the demotic joys of Christmas ; a pervasive spirit of benevolence and geniality; inexhaustible powers of character creation; a wonderful ear for characteristic speech, often imaginatively heightened; a strong narrative impulse; and a prose style that, if here overdependent on a few comic mannerisms, was highly individual and inventive. Rapidly improvised and written only weeks or days ahead of its serial publication, Pickwick contains weak and jejune passages and is an unsatisfactory whole—partly because Dickens was rapidly developing his craft as a novelist while writing and publishing it. What is remarkable is that a first novel , written in such circumstances, not only established him overnight and created a new tradition of popular literature but also survived, despite its crudities, as one of the best-known novels in the world.

His self-assurance and artistic ambitiousness appeared in Oliver Twist , where he rejected the temptation to repeat the successful Pickwick formula. Though containing much comedy still, Oliver Twist is more centrally concerned with social and moral evil (the workhouse and the criminal world); it culminates in Bill Sikes ’s murdering Nancy and Fagin ’s last night in the condemned cell at Newgate. The latter episode was memorably depicted in an engraving by George Cruikshank ; the imaginative potency of Dickens’s characters and settings owes much, indeed, to his original illustrators (Cruikshank for Sketches by “Boz” and Oliver Twist , “Phiz” [ Hablot K. Browne ] for most of the other novels until the 1860s). The currency of his fiction owed much, too, to its being so easy to adapt into effective stage versions. Sometimes 20 London theatres simultaneously were producing adaptations of his latest story, so even nonreaders became acquainted with simplified versions of his works. The theatre was often a subject of his fiction, too, as in the Crummles troupe in Nicholas Nickleby . This novel reverted to the Pickwick shape and atmosphere, though the indictment of the brutal Yorkshire schools (Dotheboys Hall) continued the important innovation in English fiction seen in Oliver Twist —the spectacle of the lost or oppressed child as an occasion for pathos and social criticism . This was amplified in The Old Curiosity Shop , where the death of Little Nell was found overwhelmingly powerful at the time, though a few decades later it became a byword for what would be referred to, broadly, as “Victorian sentimentality.” In Barnaby Rudge he attempted another genre , the historical novel . Like his later attempt in this kind, A Tale of Two Cities , it was set in the late 18th century and presented with great vigour and understanding (and some ambivalence of attitude) the spectacle of large-scale mob violence.

To create an artistic unity out of the wide range of moods and materials included in every novel, with often several complicated plots involving scores of characters, was made even more difficult by Dickens’s writing and publishing them serially. In Martin Chuzzlewit he tried “to resist the temptation of the current Monthly Number, and to keep a steadier eye upon the general purpose and design” (1844 Preface). Its American episodes had, however, been unpremeditated (he suddenly decided to boost the disappointing sales by some America-baiting and to revenge himself against insults and injuries from the American press). A concentration on “the general purpose and design” was more effective in the next novel, Dombey and Son (1846–48), though the experience of writing the shorter, and unserialized, Christmas books had helped him obtain greater coherence .

Charles Dickens online

Charles dickens biography.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was a British author who penned the beloved classics Oliver Twist , A Christmas Carol , David Copperfield , and Great Expectations .

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• Who Was Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens was a British author, journalist, editor, illustrator, and social commentator who wrote the beloved classics Oliver Twist , A Christmas Carol , and Great Expectations . His books were first published in monthly serial installments, which became a lucrative source of income following a childhood of abject poverty. Dickens wrote 15 novels in total, including Nicholas Nickleby , David Copperfield , and A Tale of Two Cities . His writing provided a stark portrait of poor and working class people in the Victorian era that helped to bring about social change. Dickens died in June 1870 at age 58 and is remembered as one of the most important and influential writers of the 19 th century.

Quick Facts

Early life and education, life as a journalist, editor, and illustrator, personal life: wife and children, charles dickens’ books: 'oliver twist,' 'great expectations,' and more, travels to the united states, 'a christmas carol' and other works, pop culture adaptations.

FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens BORN: February 7, 1812 DIED: June 9, 1870 BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England SPOUSE: Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1836-1870) CHILDREN: Charles Jr., Mary, Kate, Walter, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, and Edward ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth on the southern coast of England. He was the second of eight children born to John Dickens, a naval clerk who dreamed of striking it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to be a teacher and school director. Despite his parents’ best efforts, the family remained poor but nevertheless happy in the early days.

In 1816, they moved to Chatham, Kent, where young Dickens and his siblings were free to roam the countryside and explore the old castle at Rochester. Dickens was a sickly child and prone to spasms, which prevented him from playing sports. He compensated by reading avidly, including such books as Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones , Peregrine Pickle , and The Arabian Nights , according to The World of Charles Dickens by Fido Martin.

In 1822, the Dickens family moved to Camden Town, a poor neighborhood in London. By then, the family’s financial situation had grown dire, as Charles’ father had a dangerous habit of living beyond the family’s means. Eventually, John was sent to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 years old. He boarded with a sympathetic family friend named Elizabeth Roylance, who later inspired the character Mrs. Pipchin in Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey and Son , according to Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan.

Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens was forced to leave school to work at a boot-blacking factory alongside the River Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden factory, Dickens earned 6 shillings a week labeling pots of “blacking,” a substance used to clean fireplaces. It was the best he could do to help support his family, and the strenuous working conditions heavily influenced his future writing and his views on treatment of the poor and working class.

Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back to school when his father received a family inheritance and used it to pay off his debts. He attended the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town, where he encountered what he called “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of Charles Dickens by Angus Wilson. The school’s sadistic headmaster was later the inspiration for the character Mr. Creakle in Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield .

When Dickens was 15, his education was pulled out from under him once again. In 1827, he had to drop out of school and work as an office boy to contribute to his family’s income. However, as it turned out, the job became a launching point for his writing career. Within a year of being hired, Dickens began freelance reporting at the law courts of London. Just a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches to various magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym “Boz,” which was a family nickname. His first published story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine in 1833. Seeing his writing in print made his eyes “overflow with joy and pride,” according to Dickens: A Biography . In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.

Dickens later edited magazines including Household Words and All the Year Round , the latter of which he founded. In both, he promoted and originally published some of his own work such as Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities .

Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836, soon after the publication of his first book, Sketches by Boz . She was the daughter of George Hogarth, the editor of the Evening Chronicle . Dickens and Hogarth went on to have 10 children between 1837 and 1852, according to biographer Fred Kaplan. Among them were magazine editor Charles Dickens Jr., painter Kate Dickens Perugini, barrister Henry Fielding Dickens, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating to the Australia.

In 1851, Dickens suffered two devastating losses: the deaths of his infant daughter, Dora, and his father, John. He also separated from his wife in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine publicly and struck up an intimate relationship with a young actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on whether the two started seeing each other before or after Dickens’ marital separation. It is also believed that he went to great lengths to erase any documentation alluding to Ternan’s presence in his life. These major losses and challenges seeped into Dickens’ writing in his “dark novel” period.

Best known for his fiction writing, Dickens wrote a total of 15 novels between 1836 and 1870. His first was The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club , and his last was The Mystery of Edwin Drood , which went unfinished due to his death.

Dickens’ books were originally published in monthly serial installments that sold for 1 shilling each. The affordable price meant everyday citizens could follow along, though wealthier readers, such as Queen Victoria , were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the stories were published again in novel form.

Dickens’ books provided a stark portrait of poor and working class people in the Victorian era that helped to bring about social change. In the 1850s, following the death of his father and infant daughter, as well as his separation from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a darkened worldview. His so-called dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1857). They feature more complicated, thematically grim plots and more complex characters, though Dickens didn’t stray from his typical societal commentary.

Read more about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

Serial Publication: April 1836 to November 1837 Novel Publication: 1837

In 1836, the same year his first book of illustrations released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club . His series, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous sports-themed illustrations, took the form of monthly serial installments. It was wildly popular with readers, and Dickens’ captions proved even more popular than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.

Oliver Twist

Serial Publication: February 1837 to March 1839 Novel Publication: November 1838

While still working on The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club , Dickens began Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy’s Progress , which would prove to be one of his most popular novels. The book follows the life of an orphan living in the streets of London, where he must get by on his wits and falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the dastardly Fagin.

Oliver Twist unromantically portrayed the mistreatment of London orphans, and the slums and poverty described in the novel made for biting social satire. Although very different from the humorous tone of the Pickwick Papers , Oliver Twist was extremely well-received in both England and America, and dedicated readers eagerly anticipated each next monthly installment, according to the biography Charles Dickens by Harold & Miriam Maltz. Even the young Queen Victoria was an avid reader of  Oliver Twist , describing it as “excessively interesting.”

Nicholas Nickleby

Serial Publication: April 1838 to October 1839 Novel Publication: 1839

As Dickens was still finishing Oliver Twist , he again began writing his follow-up work in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby . It tells the story of the title character, who must support his mother and sister following the loss of their comfortable lifestyle when his father dies and the family loses all of their money.

The Old Curiosity Shop

Serial Publication: April 1840 to February 1841 Novel Publication: 1841

Taking a few months between projects this time, Dickens’ next serial was The Old Curiosity Shop . Protagonist Nell Trent lives with her grandfather, whose gambling costs them the titular shop. The pair struggles to survive after into hiding to avoid a money lender.

Barnaby Rudge

Serial Publication: February to November 1841 Novel Publication: 1841

Right on the heels of The Old Curiosity Shop came Barnaby Rudge . The historical fiction novel, Dickens’ first, follows Barnaby and depicts the chaos of mob violence. The author originated the idea years prior but is thought to have temporarily abandoned it due to a dispute with his publisher.

Martin Chuzzlewit

Serial Publication: January 1843 to July 1844 Novel Publication: 1844

After his first American tour, Dickens wrote The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit . The story is about a man’s struggle to survive on the ruthless American frontier.

Dombey and Son

Serial Publication: October 1846 to April 1848 Novel Publication: 1848

After an uncharacteristic break, Dickens returned with Dombey and Son , which centers on the theme of how business tactics affect a family’s personal finances. Published as a novel in 1848, it takes a dark view of England and is considered pivotal to Dickens’ body of work in that it set the tone for his future novels.

David Copperfield

Serial Publication: May 1849 to November 1850 Novel Publication: November 1850

Dickens wrote his most autobiographical novel to date with David Copperfield by tapping into his own personal experiences in his difficult childhood and his work as a journalist. The book follows the life of its title character from his impoverished childhood to his maturity and success as a novelist. It was the first work of its kind: No one had ever written a novel that simply followed a character through his everyday life.

David Copperfield is considered one of Dickens’ masterpieces, and it was his personal favorite of his works; he wrote in the book’s preface, “Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.” It also helped define the public’s expectations of a Dickensian novel. In The Life of Charles Dickens , biographer John Forster wrote “Dickens never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of Copperfield ,” and biographer Fred Kaplan called the novel “an exploration of himself through his art more direct, more honest, more resolute than in his earlier fiction.”

Bleak House

Serial Publication: 1852 to 1853 Novel Publication: 1853

His next work, Bleak House , dealt with the hypocrisy of British society. The first of his “dark novels,” it was considered his most complex novel yet. Drawing upon his brief experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, the novel is built around a long-running legal case involving several conflicting wills and was described by biographer Fido Martin as “England’s greatest satire on the law’s incompetence and delays.” Dickens’ satire was so effective that it  helped support  a successful movement toward legal reform in the 1870s.

Serial Publication: April to August 1854 Novel Publication: 1854

Dickens followed Bleak House with Hard Times , which takes place in an industrial town at the peak of economic expansion. Hard Times focuses on the shortcomings of employers as well as those who seek change.

Little Dorrit

Serial Publication: December 1855 and June 1857 Novel Publication: 1857

Another novel from Dickens’ darker period is Little Dorrit , a fictional study of how human values conflict with the world’s brutality.

A Tale of Two Cities

Serial Publication: April to November 1959 Novel Publication: 1859

Coming out of his “dark novel” period, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in the periodical he founded, All the Year Round . The historical novel takes place during the French Revolution in Paris and London. Its themes focus on the need for sacrifice, the struggle between the evils inherent in oppression and revolution, and the possibility of resurrection and rebirth.

A Tale of Two Cities was a tremendous success and remains Dickens’ best-known work of historical fiction. Biographer Fido Martin called the novel “pure Dickens, but essentially a Dickens we have never seen before. This is a Dickens who has at last captured in prose fiction the stage heroics he adored.”

Great Expectations

Serial Publication: December 1860 to August 1861 Novel Publication: October 1861

Many people consider Great Expectations Dickens’ greatest literary accomplishment. The story—Dickens’ second that’s narrated in the first person—focuses on the lifelong journey of moral development for the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip. With extreme imagery and colorful characters, the well-received novel touches on wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and good versus evil. The novel was a financial success and received nearly universal acclaim, with readers responding positively to the novel’s themes of love, morality, social mobility, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.

Our Mutual Friend

Serial Publication: May 1864 to November 1865 Novel Publication: 1865

In June 1865, Dickens was a passenger on a train that plunged off a bridge in Kent, according to biographer Fred Kaplan. He tended to the wounded and even saved the lives of some passengers before assistance arrived, and he was able to retrieve his unfinished manuscript for his next novel, Our Mutual Friend , from the wreckage. That book, a satire about wealth and the Victorian working class, wasn’t received as well as Dickens’ other works, with some finding the plot too complex and disorganized.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Serial Publication: April 1870 Novel Publication: 1870

Dickins’ final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood , began its monthly serialized publication in April 1870. However, Dickens died less than two months later, leaving the novel unfinished. Only six of a planned 12 installments of his final work were completed at the time of his death, according to biographer Fido Martin.

In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour of the United States. Dickens spoke of his opposition to slavery and expressed his support for additional reform. His lectures, which began in Virginia and ended in Missouri, were so widely attended that ticket scalpers gathered outside his events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Dickens enjoyed “the greatest welcome that probably any visitor to America has ever had.”

“They flock around me as if I were an idol,” bragged Dickens, a known show-off. Although he enjoyed the attention at first, he eventually resented the invasion of privacy. He was also annoyed by what he viewed as Americans’ gregariousness and crude habits, as he later expressed in American Notes for General Circulation (1842). The sarcastic travelogue, which Dickens’ penned upon his return to England, criticized American culture and materialism.

After his criticism of the American people during his first tour, Dickens later launched a second U.S. tour from 1867 to 1868, where he hoped to set things right with the public and made charismatic speeches promising to praise the United States in reprints of American Notes for General Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit , his 1844 novel set in the American frontier.

On December 19, 1843, Dickens published A Christmas Carol , one of his most timeless and beloved works. The book features the famous protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old miser who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come—finds the holiday spirit. Dickens penned the book in just six weeks, beginning in October and finishing just in time for Christmas celebrations. Like his earlier works, it was intended as a social criticism, to bring attention to the hardships faced by England’s poorer classes.

The book was a roaring success, selling more than 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers in England and America were touched by the book’s empathetic emotional depth; one American entrepreneur reportedly gave his employees an extra day’s holiday after reading it. Despite its incredible success, the high production costs and Dickens’ disagreements with the publisher meant he received relatively few profits for A Christmas Carol , according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was forced to take legal action against the publishers for making illegal copies.

A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most popular book in the United States, selling more than two million copies in the century after its first publication there, according to Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin. It is also one of Dickens’ most adapted works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has been portrayed by such actors as Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, and Jim Carrey .

Dickens published several other Christmas novellas following A Christmas Carol , including The Chimes (1844) The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost ’s Bargain (1848). In 1867, he wrote a stage play titled No Thoroughfare .

On June 8, 1870, Dickens had a stroke at his home in Kent, England, after a day of writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood . He died the next day at age 58.

At the time, Edwin Drood had begun its serial publication; it was never finished. Only half of the planned installments of his final novel were completed at the time of Dickens’ death, according to Fido.

Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey , with thousands of mourners gathering at the beloved author’s gravesite.

When 48 Doughty Street in London—which was Dickens’ home from 1837 to 1839—was threatened with demolition, it was saved by the Dickens Fellowship and renovated, becoming the Dickens House Museum . Open since 1925, it appears like a middle-class Victorian home exactly as Dickens lived in it, and it houses a significant collection related to Dickens and his works.

Many of Dickens’ major works have been adapted for movies and stage plays, with some, like A Christmas Carol , repackaged in various forms over the years. Reginald Owen portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in one of the earliest Hollywood adaptations of the novella in 1938, while Albert Finney played the character alongside Alec Guinness as Marley’s ghost in the 1970 film Scrooge .

Some adaptations have taken unique approaches to the source material. Michael Caine portrayed Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with members of the Muppets playing other characters from the story, and Gonzo the Great portraying Dickens as a narrator. Bill Murray played a version of Scrooge in a modern-day comedic take on the classic story. Several animated versions of A Christmas Carol have also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in a 2009 computer-generated film that used motion-capture animation to create the character.

Several more of Dickens’ works have been similarly adapted. Famed director David Lean made celebrated adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). The latter novel was also adapted into a successful 1960 stage musical called Oliver! , and a 1968 movie version—directed by Carol Reed—of that same musical won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Director.

More recently, The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) put a comedic spin on Dickens’ personal favorite of his own works, with Dev Patel performing the title role. Barbara Kingsolver also adapted the novel in her Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).

• The English are, as far as I know, the hardest worked people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their wretched intervals of leisure they read for amusement and do no worse.
• I write because I can’t help it.
• Literature cannot be too faithful to the people, cannot too ardently advocate the cause of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
• An author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him forever.
• Nobody has done more harm in this single generation than everybody can mend in 10 generations.
• If I were soured [on writing], I should still try to sweeten the lives and fancies of others; but I am not—not at all.
• Well, the work is hard, the climate is hard, the life is hard: but so far the gain is enormous.
• Who that has ever reflected on the enormous and vast amount of leave-taking there is in life can ever have doubted the existence of another?
• I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt, till I traveled in America.
• My great ambition is to live in the hearts and homes of home-loving people and to be connected with the truth of the truthful English life.

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Charles Dickens Info

The life and work of charles dickens.

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Charles Dickens Biography

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was a Victorian author whose novels include A Christmas Carol , Oliver Twist , and Great Expectations .

This short biography tells about his work and little-known aspects of his life.

Table of Contents

The Childhood of Charles Dickens 1812 – 1824

Dickens enters the workforce 1827 – 1831, marriage and fame 1833 – 1854, the later years 1856 – 1870.

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth.  The city is located in Hampshire, England and is about 70 miles southwest of London.

Birthplace of Charles Dickens located in Portsmouth, England

His father, John Dickens was a clerk in a payroll office of the navy.  John Dickens was the inspiration for the character of Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield .

John Dickens, the father of Charles Dickens

His mother, Elizabeth (Barrow) Dickens inspired the characters of Mrs. Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby and Mrs. Micawber in David Copperfield .

Elizabeth Dickens, the mother of Charles Dickens

Charles was the second of the couple’s eight children.

Finances were a constant concern for the family.  John and Elizabeth were an outgoing, social couple.  The costs of entertaining along with the expenses of having a large family were too much for John’s salary. When Charles was just four months old the family moved to a smaller home to cut costs.

Despite the family’s financial struggles, young Charles dreamed of becoming a gentleman.  In 1824, when he was 12, it looked like his dreams would never come true.

That year, the family sent Charles to work in a blacking or shoe-polish factory. Charles was deeply marked by these experiences. He rarely spoke of that time of his life.

Illustration by Fred Bernard of young Charles Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory. (from the 1892 edition of Forster’s Life of Dickens)

Happily, John Dickens was able to come to an agreement with his creditors within a few months of his imprisonment. Shortly after that, he ended his son’s employment at the blacking factory and enrolled him in Wellington House Academy instead.

Learn more about the childhood of Charles Dickens including the influence of Mary Weller and the betrayal by his mother.

In May of 1827 Dickens left Wellington House Academy and entered the workforce as a law clerk at the firm of Ellis and Blackmore. His duties included keeping the petty cash fund, delivering documents, running errands and other sundry tasks.

In 1829 he changed careers and became a court stenographer. To qualify for that position Dickens had to learn the Gurney system of shorthand writing.

Example of Gurney Shorthand

In 1831 he became a shorthand reporter with the Mirror of Parliament.  The publication gave accounts of the activity in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

During this time Dickens considered becoming an actor. He was so serious about the matter that he arranged for an audition at the Lyceum Theater. However, he was ill on the day of his audition and could not go.

In December 1833 Charles Dickens’s first literary effort was published. It was a sketch or essay entitled A Dinner at Poplar Walk . Other sketches soon followed.

In 1834 Dickens met Catherine Hogarth, the woman who would become his wife.  They became engaged in 1835 and were married in April of 1836. In January of 1837 the first of their ten children was born.

Learn more about the children of Charles Dickens . The eldest went bankrupt and was later hired by his father. “Chickenstalker” joined the Canadian Mounted Police. The youngest became a Member of Parliament in New South Wales.

The Pickwick Papers   was the first novel of Charles Dickens.  It was published in monthly installments from March of 1836 until November 1837.

Charles Dickens was the author of 15 novels. He also wrote short stories, essays, articles and novellas. See a list of work by Charles Dickens .

In June of 1837 something happened that only occurred once in Dickens’s career.  He missed a deadline.  He was writing two serialized novels at once, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist .  However in June of 1837 there was no Pickwick .  There was no Oliver Twist .  Instead there was a funeral.

At that time, Dickens’s sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth was living with Charles and Catherine.  Mary was a favorite with the couple and was like a little sister to Charles.  On the evening of May 6th Mary went with the couple to the St. James Theatre.  Everything seemed fine. The group returned late in the evening and Mary retired for the night.  Shortly after that Dickens heard a cry from Mary’s room.  She was ill.  Despite her doctor’s care Mary passed away in Dickens’s arms the next day.

Dickens would relive this sad incident in his life while writing The Old Curiosity Shop .  He was traumatized by the death of Little Nell in that novel.  Dickens wrote to a friend about Little Nell’s death, “Old wounds bleed afresh when I think of this sad story.”

Nicholas Nickleby ,  the third novel of Charles Dickens, was published in installments starting in 1838.  One of Dickens’s goals in writing Nicholas Nickleby was to expose the ugly truth about Yorkshire boarding schools.

In 1841 Charles and Catherine traveled to Scotland and Barnaby Rudge was published.

Charles Dickens’s sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth in later years

Charles and Catherine traveled to America in 1842.  While on tour Dickens often spoke of the need for an international copyright agreement . The lack of such an agreement enabled his books to be published in the United States without his permission and without any royalties being paid.

The United States left quite an impression on Dickens, a very unfavorable impression.

Dickens was horrified by slavery, appalled by the common use of spitting tobacco and indignant about his treatment by the press.

 His feelings came out in American Notes and later in Martin Chuzzlewit .

As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening.  In all the public places of America, this filthy custom is recognised.  In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. ~ American Notes by Charles Dickens

Sketch of Charles Dickens in 1842 (Small image on the bottom left is his sister, Fanny)

In 1842 Catherine’s sister, Georgina, came to live with the couple. Georgina helped with the children and the house. She remained part of the Dickens household until the death of her brother-in-law.

In September of 1843 Dickens visited the Field Lane Ragged School. In a letter to his friend, Miss Coutts, he described what he saw at the school:

 I have very seldom seen, in all the strange and dreadful things I have seen in London and elsewhere anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children.  And although I know; and am as sure as it is possible for one to be of anything which has not happened; that in the prodigious misery and ignorance of the swarming masses of mankind in England, the seeds of its certain ruin are sown.

In October of that year Dickens began work on A Christmas Carol .  It was published on December 19, 1843.

Publication of Dombey and Son began in 1846.  It was Dickens’s seventh novel.

1851 was a difficult year.  John Dickens, the father of Charles Dickens, died in March.  Catherine Dickens suffered a nervous collapse.  Later Dora Dickens , the youngest daughter of Charles and Catherine, died when she was only eight months old.  

There were also bright spots in 1851. It was the year that Dickens moved into Tavistock House.  It was there that he wrote Bleak House , H ard Times and Little Dorrit .

Dickens bought Gad’s Hill Place in 1856.  He would own the home for the rest of his life.

The above photo shows Dickens at Gad’s Hill in 1862. The back row from left to right is; H.F. Chorley, Kate Dickens, Mamie Dickens and Charles Dickens. Seated are C.A. Collins and Georgina Hogarth.

In 1857 Dickens met the woman who was to be his companion until his death, Ellen Ternan.

Dickens had already become disenchanted with his wife. He wrote to a friend, “Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so too—and much more so.”

Meeting Ellen stressed the differences between the marriage Dickens had and the relationship that he wanted. Later in 1857 Charles and Catherine took separate bedrooms. In 1858 they legally separated.

In 1858 Charles Dickens began giving professional readings.  The readings were a combination of oratory and passionate acting.  They were very popular and Dickens continued to give them throughout his life.

“Charles Dickens as he appears when reading.” Illustration in Harper’s Weekly, December 1867.

Charles Dickens founded the weekly publication  All the Year Round.   The first issue was printed in April of 1859.  Dickens served as editor and publisher.  One feature of the publication was its serialization of novels.  The first novel serialized in  All the Year Round  was  A Tale of Two Cities .

Publication of Great Expectations began in 1860.  It was also serialized in  All the Year Round.

In June of 1865 Charles Dickens had a brush with death.  Dickens, Ellen Ternan and her mother were involved in the Staplehurst railway accident .  The train’s first seven carriages went off a bridge that was being repaired. 

Dickens was uninjured and helped people that were hurt in the accident.  When help finally arrived and the accident scene was being evacuated Dickens remembered something. He made his way back into the wrecked train one last time to retrieve the latest installment of Our Mutual Friend , the novel he was writing at the time.

It would be the last novel he ever completed.

Dickens returned to America in 1867 for an extensive reading tour. 

In 1869 Dickens’s doctor advised him against giving further public readings. The events were popular, but the strain to his system was too great.

In October of 1869, at Gad’s Hill Place, Dickens began work on The Mystery of Edwin Drood . He would never finish it.

Dickens arranged a farewell tour and gave his last reading in March of 1870. It is thought that the effects of the readings was one of the factors leading to his death.

On June 9, 1870 Dickens died at Gad’s Hill Place.

Biography Online

Charles Dickens biography

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens.

As a child, Charles experienced the fickle hands of fate; he was first taught at a private school before being removed because of his family’s financial hardship.

In fact, his father’s debts were so bad, the whole family (apart from the young Charles was sent to the debtor’s prison at Marshalsea – this would later be the setting for one of his novels – Little Dorrit ). However, although Charles escaped detention in the debtors’ prison, he was made to work long, 10 hour days, at a local boot-blacking factory. The hard and dangerous work left a lasting impression on Charles Dickens, who would later incorporate in his writings a sense of social injustice that was endemic in Victorian Britain.

“I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!” – from David Copperfield.

Charles managed to escape the grind of factory work, by training to be a shorthand writer and gaining employment as a journalist – reporting on court cases.

In 1833, he became a parliamentary journalist for the Morning Chronicle . The young Dickens was fascinated with the Houses of Parliament, though he was often left with a lowly impression of the MPs. Shortly after this, he began writing his first serialised stories, published under a pseudonym – Boz.

In 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and also in that year, he saw the first publication of ‘ The Pickwick Papers.’ His first book proved to be a great seller, and this enabled him to become a full-time writer.

As well as writing popular novels, Charles Dickens took great interest in the social issues of the day. He toured both Europe and the United States speaking against slavery and the various social injustices that he saw. He even founded his own paper – The Daily News. This was its first editorial:

“The principles advocated in The Daily News will be principles of progress and improvement; of education, civil and religious liberty, and equal legislation. Principles, such as its conductors believe the advancing spirit of the time requires: the condition of the country demands: and justice, reason and experience legitimately sanction.”

The Daily News (21st January 1846)

Charles Dickens is one of the most popular writers in English. In particular, his novels are brimming with colourful and eccentric characters which leave a lasting impression. He achieved this through his vivid memory of the various people he had met through his life, but also he added a touch of fantasy and exaggeration with his vivid descriptive style.

There are various themes which run throughout his writings, which often reflect a degree of autobiography. Dickens loved the ‘rags to riches stories’, exemplified by Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. He frequently highlighted the worst excesses of Victorian society and made a passionate case for a more caring and moral society.

For his attacks on social injustice, Dickens was considered a “Radical” of his time. Though in a later essay by the socialist, George Orwell , Orwell questioned his lack of alternatives:

“In Oliver Twist, Hard Times, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do it without making himself hated, and, more he has become a national institution himself… Dickens seems to have succeeded in attacking everybody and antagonizing nobody. Naturally this makes one wonder whether after all there was something unreal in his attack upon society.”

– George Orwell, Charles Dickens 1939

Charles Dickens had ten children with his wife, but, became estranged from her and ended his life living with his mistress Ellen Ternan. Also towards the end of his life, in  June 1865, he was involved in the tragic Staplehurst rail crash where he narrowly avoided injury.

Dickens wrote a book about Jesus Christ  The Life of Our Lord  (1849) – where he encourages others to follow the Christian faith. He professed to be a practising Christian in the Anglican faith (with also an interest in the Unitarian church). However, he could be critical of organised religion and opposed the idea of keeping the Sabbath only for church-going.

Dickens was a noted philanthropist helping to raise funds for charities, such as Great Ormond Street. He also helped to set up a home for ‘fallen women.’ The emphasis was on providing destitute women with an education and way to redeem themselves in societies eyes. Redemption was an important aspect of Dicken’s philosophy and he often criticised harsh and punitive punishments, such as solitary confinement.

Dickens died on June 8th, 1870 after a stroke. He was writing a book ‘Edwin Drood’. He had wished to be buried at Rochester Cathedral in a simple and private manner, but contrary to his wishes, he was buried at Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

His epitaph read:

“To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England’s most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers is lost to the world.”

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Charles Dickens” Oxford,  UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 25th September 2009. Last updated 13 February 2018.

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Catherine Dickens

Catherine (Hogarth) Dickens (1815-1879) - Charles Dickens' wife, with whom he fathered 10 children. She was born in Scotland on May 19, 1815 and came to England with her family in 1834. Catherine was the daughter of George Hogarth , editor of the Evening Chronicle where Dickens was a young journalist. They were married on April 2, 1836 in St. Luke's Church, Chelsea and honeymooned in Chalk, near Chatham.

Charles was undoubtably in love at the outset but his feelings for Catherine wained as the family grew. With the birth of their last child in 1852 Dickens found Catherine an increasingly incompetent mother and housekeeper ( Johnson, 1952, p. 905-909 ) . Their separation, in 1858, was much publicized and rumors of Dickens unfaithfulness abounded, which he vehemently denied in public. Dickens and Catherine had little correspondence after the break, Catherine moving to a house in London with oldest son, Charley , and Dickens retreating to Gads Hill in Kent with Catherine's sister, Georgina , and all of the children except Charlie remaining with him. On her deathbed in 1879 she gave her collection of Dickens' letters to daughter Kate instructing her to " Give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once " ( Schlicke, 1999, p. 153-157 ) .

Katherine is buried at Highgate Cemetery , London.

Read a letter from Dickens to John Forster concerning separation from Catherine.

What Shall We Have for Dinner?

Around 1850 Catherine released a collection of recipes and bills of fare for dinners for from two to eighteen people. The book, published by Bradbury and Evans, was called What Shall We Have for Dinner? and was written under the pen name Lady Maria Clutterbuck. Charles Dickens wrote the introduction using Maria's voice ( Nayder, 2011, p. 186-189 ) . The book is referred to as the source of Christmas dinner in Thomas Keneally's novel The Dickens Boy .

Amazon.com: The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth by Lillian Nayder

The Life of Charles Dickens

An illustrated hypertext biography of charles dickens, childhood and education.

• The Law and Early Jounalism
• Early Novels
• Middle Years
• Later Years

At this point the family consisted of Charles, older sister Fanny , younger brothers Alfred and Frederick , and younger sister Letitia . Everyone except Charles and Fanny went to live in the Marshalsea with their parents. Fanny was boarding at the Royal Academy of Music, and Charles initially lodged with a landlady in Camden Town in north London. This proved to be too long a walk every day to the blacking factory and his family in the Marshalsea, so a room was found for him on Lant Street in Southwark near the prison.

Young Charles, who dreamed of growing up a gentleman, found these dreams dashed working alongside common boys at the blacking factory and later wrote "It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age." Dickens shared this painful part of his childhood through the story of David Copperfield although no one realized it was autobiographical until related by biographer John Forster after Dickens' death ( Forster, 1899, v. 1, p. 22-39 ) .

Charles was to further his education at Wellington House Academy , a school run by the harsh schoolmaster William Jones , a man who delighted in corporal punishment and who Dickens later described as " by far the most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know ". Charles would spend nearly three years, aged 12-15, at Wellington House, leaving in the spring of 1827 ( Slater, 2009, p. 25-27 ) . Many of his experiences at school, and the masters who taught there, would later find their way into his fiction.

The Law and Early Journalism

Charles had been fascinated with the theatre since childhood and often attended the theatre to break the monotony of reporting on parliamentary proceedings. He wrote to George Bartley, manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, in 1832 asking for an audition, which was granted. On the day of the audition Charles was ill with a bad cold and inflammation of the face and missed the appointment. He wrote to Bartley explaining the illness and that he would apply for another audition next season. He would later marvel at how near he came to a very different sort of life ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 139-140 ) .

Dickens, writing feverishly, as well as holding down the job of a reporter, now found himself in the throes of romance. He became a regular visitor to the Hogarth household and soon proposed marriage, which Catherine quickly accepted ( Slater, 2009, p. 47 ) . They were married at St. Luke's church, Chelsea on April 2, 1836. Two months previous his collection of short stories was published in book form by John Macrone entitled Sketches by Boz with illustrations by popular artist George Cruikshank ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 174 ) . Dickens' pseudonym Boz came from his younger brother Augustus's through-the-nose pronunciation of his own nickname, Moses.

The Early Novels

Upon returning home he penned the promised travel book, American Notes , a rather unflattering description of America, and followed that with Martin Chuzzlewit , published in monthly parts, in which the protagonist goes to America and is subjected to the same sort of puffed up, mercenary people Dickens found there. The story was not well received and did not sell well ( Patten, 1978, p. 133 ) . Neither had Barnaby Rudge ( Schlicke, 1999, p. 33 ) , and Dickens felt that perhaps his lamp had gone out.

Dickens found himself in dire financial straits. He had borrowed heavily from his publishers for the American trip and his family continued to grow with their fifth child, son Francis , on the way. His feckless father was borrowing money in Charles' name behind his back. He needed an idea for a new book that would satisfy his pecuniary problems ( Slater, 2009, p. 215-220 ) .

The seeds for the story that became A Christmas Carol were planted in Dickens' mind during a trip to Manchester to deliver a speech in support of education. Thoughts of education as a remedy for crime and poverty, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School , caused Dickens to resolve to " strike a sledge hammer blow " for the poor ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 408-409 ) . As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote that as the tale unfolded he " wept and laughed, and wept again' and that he 'walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed " ( Forster, 1899, v. 1, p. 326 ) . Dickens was at odds with Chapman and Hall over the low receipts from Martin Chuzzlewit and decided to self-publish the book, overspending on color illustrations and lavish binding and then setting the cost low so that everyone could afford it ( Slater, 2009, p. 220 ) . The book was an instant success but royalties were low after production costs were paid .

Serialization of Martin Chuzzlewit came to a conclusion in July, 1844, and Dickens conceived of the idea of another travel book; this time he would go to Italy ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 426 ) . The family spent a year in Italy, first in Genoa, and then traveling through the southern part of the country. He wrote the second of his Christmas Books, The Chimes ( Slater, 2009, p. 230-231 ) , while in Genoa and sent his adventures home in the form of letters which were published in the Daily News . These were collected into a single volume entitled Pictures from Italy in May, 1846 ( Davis, 1999, p. 318 ) .

During the 1840s Dickens, with a troupe of friends and family in tow, began acting in amateur theatricals in London and across Britain. Charles worked tirelessly as actor and stage manager and often adjusted scenes, assisted carpenters, invented costumes, devised playbills, and generally oversaw the entire production of the performances ( Forster, 1899, v. 1, p. 436 ) . The Dickens' amateur troupe even performed twice for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert ( Davis, 1999, p. 4 ) .

The Middle Years

In 1839 the Dickens family moved from Doughty Street to a larger home at Devonshire Terrace near Regent's Park . The family continued to grow with the addition of sons Alfred (1845), Sydney (1847), and Henry (1849).

Dickens continued to write a book for the Christmas season every year. After A Christmas Carol (1843), and The Chimes (1844), he followed with The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848). All of these sold well at the time of publication but none endured as A Christmas Carol has ( Schlicke, 1999, p. 97 ) .

Dickens had begun writing an autobiography in the late 1840s that he shared with his friend and future biographer, John Forster ( Forster, 1899, v. 1, p. 22 ) . He found the writing too painful and opted instead to work his story into the fictional account of David Copperfield , which he later described as his personal favorite among his novels ( David Copperfield , p. xii ) . The story was serialized from May 1849 until November 1850. During the writing of Copperfield the tireless Dickens began another venture, a weekly magazine called Household Words . Charles worked as editor as well as contributor with additional pieces supplied by other writers. Also during the writing of Copperfield Catherine gave birth to a daughter, named for David Copperfield's wife Dora ( Slater, 2009, p. 312 ) . Dora , sickly from birth, died at 8 months old ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 627-628 ) .

Dickens followed David Copperfield with what many consider one of his finest novels, Bleak House ( Davis, 1999, p. 35 ) . Dickens used his previous experience as a court reporter to tell the story of a prolonged case in the Courts of Chancery. During the writing of Bleak House Catherine gave birth to a son, Edward (1852), nicknamed Plorn. Edward would be last of Charles and Catherine's children and the family moved again, this time to Tavistock House . Following Bleak House Dickens serialized his next book, Hard Times , in his weekly magazine, Household Words . Following Hard Times Dickens returned to the painful childhood memory of his father's imprisonment for debt with the story of Little Dorrit . Amy Dorrit's father, William , was a prisoner in the Marshalsea debtor's prison and Amy was born there.

During the 1850s Charles and Catherine's marriage started to show signs of trouble. Dickens grew increasingly dissatisfied with Catherine whom, after giving birth to ten children, had grown quite stout and lethargic. She was increasingly unable to keep up with her energetic husband ( Schlicke, 1999, p. 155 ) . The problem came to a head when Dickens became enthralled with a young actress he met during one of his amateur theatricals, Ellen Ternan . Charles and Catherine were separated in 1858 and caused a public stir mostly contributed to by Dickens' desire to exonerate himself ( Johnson, 1952, p. 922-925 ) . All of the Dickens children, with exception of Charley , would live with their father, as would Catherine's sister, Georgina . The relationship with Ternan, the depth of which is still being debated ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 914-918 ) , would continue the rest of Dickens' life.

Dickens and his children now moved into the mansion Gads Hill Place in Kent that he had purchased in 1856 near his childhood home of Chatham. As a boy, Dickens would walk by the impressive house, built in 1780, with his father who told him that with hard work he could someday live in such a splendid mansion ( Forster, 1899, v. 1, p. 6 ) . In 1864 Dickens received, from actor friend Charles Fechter, a two-story Swiss chalet that Dickens had installed across the road from Gads Hill with a tunnel under the road for access ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 955-956 ) . Dickens wrote his his final works in his study on the top floor of the chalet.

The separation with Catherine also caused a rift between Dickens and his publishers, Bradbury and Evans . Bradbury and Evans also published the popular magazine Punch . When they refused to publish Dickens' personal statement , his explanation for the recent separation, Charles was furious and refused to have further dealings with them. He ceased publication of his weekly magazine, Household Words , continuing it under a new name, All the Year Round , and with his old publishers, Chapman and Hall ( Kaplan, 1988, p. 395-401 ) .

In the 1850s Dickens began reading excerpts of his books in public, first for charity, and, beginning in 1858, for profit. These readings proved extremely popular with the public and Dickens continued them for the rest of his life. The readings included excerpts from his Christmas books , David Copperfield , and Nicholas Nickleby , with A Christmas Carol , for which he wrote a condensed verion , and The Trial from Pickwick being the most popular ( Davis, 1999, p. 328 ) . He later included the dramatic murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist , the performance of which took a toll on Dickens' fragile health ( Johnson, 1952, p. 1144 ) .

The Later Years

In May, 1864, Dickens began publication of what would be his last completed novel. Published in monthly installments, Our Mutual Friend touches the familiar theme of the evils and corruption that the love of money brings. Poor health causing perhaps a stutter in his usual creative genius, Dickens found beginning the novel difficult, he wrote to Forster "Although I have not been wanting in industry, I have been wanting in invention" ( Letters, 1998, v. 10, p. 414 ) . After finally finding his footing, the monthly installments did not sell well despite a massive advertising blitz ( Patten, 1978, p. 307-308 ) .

On the 9th of June, 1865, traveling back from France with Ellen Ternan and her mother, and with the latest installment of Our Mutual Friend , the train in which they were traveling was involved in an accident in Staplehurst, Kent. Many were killed but Dickens and his companions escaped serious injury although Dickens was severely shaken. Three years later he wrote that he still experienced " vague rushes of terror even riding in hansom cabs " ( Johnson, 1952, p. 1018-1021 ) .

In the late 1850s Dickens began to contemplate a second visit to America , tempted by the money he could make by extending his public readings there. Despite pleas not to go from friends and family because of increasingly ill health ( Johnson, 1952, p. 1070 ) , he finally decided to go and arrived in Boston on November 19, 1867. The original plan called for a visit to Chicago and as far west as St. Louis. Because of ill health and bad weather this idea was scrapped and Dickens did not venture from the northeastern states ( Slater, 2009, p. 580 ) . He stayed for 5 months and gave 76 extremely popular performances for which he earned, after expenses, an incredible £19,000 ( Schlicke, 1999, p. 17 ) .

Dickens returned home in May, 1868, somewhat revitalized during the sea voyage, to a full load of work. He immediately plunged back into editing All the Year Round and, in October, began a farewell reading tour of Britain that included a new, very passionate, and physically taxing, performance of the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist ( Davis, 1999, p. 353 ) .

Monthly publication of what was to be his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood , began in April, 1870. On the evening of June 8, 1870, Dickens, after working on the latest installment of Drood that morning in the chalet at Gads Hill , suffered a stroke and died the next day ( Ackroyd, 1990, p. 1076-1079 ) . The Mystery of Edwin Drood was exactly half finished and the mystery is unsolved to this day .

Dickens had wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, but the Nation would not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands of mourners overflowing the open grave ( Forster, 1899, v. 2, p. 513 ) .

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Biography of Charles Dickens, English Novelist

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Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812–June 9, 1870) was a popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and to this day he remains a giant in British literature. Dickens wrote numerous books that are now considered classics, including "David Copperfield," "Oliver Twist," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Great Expectations." Much of his work was inspired by the difficulties he faced in childhood as well as social and economic problems in Victorian Britain.

Fast Facts: Charles Dickens

• Known For : Dickens was the popular author of "Oliver Twist," "A Christmas Carol," and other classics.
• Born : February 7, 1812 in Portsea, England
• Parents : Elizabeth and John Dickens
• Died : June 9, 1870 in Higham, England
• Published Works : Oliver Twist (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Hard Times (1854), Great Expectations (1861)
• Spouse : Catherine Hogarth (m. 1836–1870)
• Children : 10

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsea, England. His father had a job working as a pay clerk for the British Navy, and the Dickens family, by the standards of the day, should have enjoyed a comfortable life. But his father's spending habits got them into constant financial difficulties. When Charles was 12, his father was sent to debtors' prison, and Charles was forced to take a job in a factory that made shoe polish known as blacking.

Life in the blacking factory for the bright 12-year-old was an ordeal. He felt humiliated and ashamed, and the year or so he spent sticking labels on jars would be a profound influence on his life. When his father managed to get out of debtors' prison, Charles was able to resume his sporadic schooling. However, he was forced to take a job as an office boy at the age of 15.

By his late teens, he had learned stenography and landed a job as a reporter in the London courts. By the early 1830s , he was reporting for two London newspapers.

Early Career

Dickens aspired to break away from newspapers and become an independent writer, and he began writing sketches of life in London. In 1833 he began submitting them to a magazine, The Monthly . He would later recall how he submitted his first manuscript, which he said was "dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street."

When the sketch he'd written, titled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," appeared in print, Dickens was overjoyed. The sketch appeared with no byline, but soon he began publishing items under the pen name "Boz."

The witty and insightful articles Dickens wrote became popular, and he was eventually given the chance to collect them in a book. "Sketches by Boz" first appeared in early 1836, when Dickens had just turned 24. Buoyed by the success of his first book, he married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of a newspaper editor. He settled into a new life as a family man and an author.

Rise to Fame

"Sketches by Boz" was so popular that the publisher commissioned a sequel, which appeared in 1837. Dickens was also approached to write the text to accompany a set of illustrations, and that project turned into his first novel, "The Pickwick Papers," which was published in installments from 1836 to 1837. This book was followed by "Oliver Twist," which appeared in 1839.

Dickens became amazingly productive. "Nicholas Nickleby" was written in 1839, and "The Old Curiosity Shop" in 1841. In addition to these novels, Dickens was turning out a steady stream of articles for magazines. His work was incredibly popular. Dickens was able to create remarkable characters, and his writing often combined comic touches with tragic elements. His empathy for working people and for those caught in unfortunate circumstances made readers feel a bond with him.

As his novels appeared in serial form, the reading public was often gripped with anticipation. The popularity of Dickens spread to America, and there were stories told about how Americans would greet British ships at the docks in New York to find out what had happened next in Dickens' latest novel.

Visit to America

Capitalizing on his international fame, Dickens visited the United States in 1842 when he was 30 years old. The American public was eager to greet him, and he was treated to banquets and celebrations during his travels.

In New England, Dickens visited the factories of Lowell, Massachusetts, and in New York City he was taken to the see the Five Points , the notorious and dangerous slum on the Lower East Side. There was talk of him visiting the South, but as he was horrified by the idea of enslavement he never went south of Virginia.

Upon returning to England, Dickens wrote an account of his American travels which offended many Americans.

'A Christmas Carol'

In 1842, Dickens wrote another novel, "Barnaby Rudge." The following year, while writing the novel "Martin Chuzzlewit," Dickens visited the industrial city of Manchester, England. He addressed a gathering of workers, and later he took a long walk and began to think about writing a Christmas book that would be a protest against the profound economic inequality he saw in Victorian England. Dickens published " A Christmas Carol " in December 1843, and it became one of his most enduring works.

Dickens traveled around Europe during the mid-1840s. After returning to England, he published five new novels: "Dombey and Son," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House," "Hard Times," and "Little Dorrit."

By the late 1850s , Dickens was spending more time giving public readings. His income was enormous, but so were his expenses, and he often feared he would be plunged back into the sort of poverty he had known as a child.

Charles Dickens, in middle age, appeared to be on top of the world. He was able to travel as he wished, and he spent summers in Italy. In the late 1850s, he purchased a mansion, Gad's Hill, which he had first seen and admired as a child.

Despite his worldly success, though, Dickens was beset by problems. He and his wife had a large family of 10 children, but the marriage was often troubled. In 1858, a personal crisis turned into a public scandal when Dickens left his wife and apparently began a secretive affair with actress Ellen "Nelly" Ternan, who was only 19 years old. Rumors about his private life spread. Against the advice of friends, Dickens wrote a letter defending himself, which was printed in newspapers in New York and London.

For the last 10 years of his life, Dickens was often estranged from his children, and his relationships with old friends suffered.

Though he hadn't enjoyed his tour of America in 1842, Dickens returned in late 1867. He was again welcomed warmly, and large crowds flocked to his public appearances. He toured the East Coast of the United States for five months.

He returned to England exhausted, yet continued to embark on more reading tours. Though his health was failing, the tours were lucrative, and he pushed himself to keep appearing onstage.

Dickens planned a new novel for publication in serial form. "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" began appearing in April 1870. On June 8, 1870, Dickens spent the afternoon working on the novel before suffering a stroke at dinner. He died the next day.

The funeral for Dickens was modest, and praised, according to a New York Times article, as being in keeping with the "democratic spirit of the age." Dickens was accorded a high honor, however, as he was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, near other literary figures such as Geoffrey Chaucer , Edmund Spenser , and Dr. Samuel Johnson.

The importance of Charles Dickens in English literature remains enormous. His books have never gone out of print, and they are widely read to this day. As the works lend themselves to dramatic interpretation, numerous plays, television programs, and feature films based on them continue to appear.

• Kaplan, Fred. "Dickens: a Biography." Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
• Tomalin, Claire. "Charles Dickens: a Life." Penguin Press, 2012.
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Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens Biography

Dickens, Charles John Huffam (1812-1870), probably the best-known and, to many people, the greatest English novelist of the 19th century. A moralist, satirist, and social reformer, Dickens crafted complex plots and striking characters that capture the panorama of English society.

Dickens's novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. But he presents this criticism through the lives of characters that seem to live and breathe. Paradoxically, they often do so by being flamboyantly larger than life: The 20th-century poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote, "Dickens's characters are real because there is no one like them." Yet though these characters range through the sentimental, grotesque, and humorous, few authors match Dickens's psychological realism and depth. Dickens's novels rank among the funniest and most gripping ever written, among the most passionate and persuasive on the topic of social justice, and among the most psychologically telling and insightful works of fiction. They are also some of the most masterful works in terms of artistic form, including narrative structure, repeated motifs, consistent imagery, juxtaposition of symbols, stylization of characters and settings, and command of language.

Dickens established (and made profitable) the method of first publishing novels in serial instalments in monthly magazines. He thereby reached a larger audience including those who could only afford their reading on such an instalment plan. This form of publication soon became popular with other writers in Britain and the United States.

II Early Years

Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on England's southern coast. His father was a clerk in the British Navy pay office a respectable position, but with little social status. His paternal grandparents, a steward (property manager) and a housekeeper, possessed even less status, having been servants, and Dickens later concealed their background. Dickens's mother supposedly came from a more respectable family. Yet two years before Dickens's birth, his mother's father was caught embezzling and fled to Europe, never to return.

The family's increasing poverty forced Dickens out of school at age 12 to work in Warren's Blacking Warehouse, a shoe-polish factory, where the other working boys mocked him as "the young gentleman." His father was then imprisoned for debt. The humiliations of his father's imprisonment and his labor in the blacking factory formed Dickens's greatest wound and became his deepest secret. He could not confide them even to his wife, although they provide the unacknowledged foundation of his fiction.

Soon after his father's release from prison, Dickens got a better job as errand boy in law offices. He taught himself shorthand to get an even better job later as a court stenographer and as a reporter in Parliament. At the same time, Dickens, who had a reporter's eye for transcribing the life around him, especially anything comic or odd, submitted short sketches to obscure magazines. The first published sketch, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk" (later retitled "Mr. Minns and His Cousin") brought tears to Dickens's eyes when he discovered it in the pages of The Monthly Magazine in 1833. From then on his sketches, which appeared under the pen name "Boz" (rhymes with "rose") in The Evening Chronicle, earned him a modest reputation. Boz originated as a childhood nickname for Dickens's younger brother Augustus.

Dickens became a regular visitor at the home of George Hogarth, editor of The Evening Chronicle, and in 1835 became engaged to Hogarth's daughter Catherine. Publication of the collected Sketches by Boz in 1836 gave Dickens sufficient income to marry Catherine Hogarth that year. The marriage proved unhappy.

III Literary Career

Soon after Sketches by Boz appeared, the fledgling publishing firm of Chapman and Hall approached Dickens to write a story in monthly instalments. The publisher intended the story as a backdrop for a series of woodcuts by the then-famous artist Robert Seymour, who had originated the idea for the story. With characteristic confidence, Dickens, although younger and relatively unknown, successfully insisted that Seymour's pictures illustrate his own story instead. After the first instalment, Dickens wrote to the artist he had displaced to correct a drawing he felt was not faithful enough to his prose. Seymour made the change, went into his backyard, and expressed his displeasure by blowing his brains out. Dickens and his publishers simply pressed on with a new artist. The comic novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, appeared serially in 1836 and 1837 and was first published in book form The Pickwick Papers in 1837.

The runaway success of The Pickwick Papers , as it is generally known today, clinched Dickens's fame. There were Pickwick coats and Pickwick cigars, and the plump, spectacled hero, Samuel Pickwick, became a national figure. Four years later, Dickens's readers found Dolly Varden, the heroine of Barnaby Rudge (1841), so irresistible that they named a waltz, a rose, and even a trout for her. The widespread familiarity today with Ebenezer Scrooge and his proverbial hard-heartedness from A Christmas Carol (1843) demonstrate that Dickens's characters live on in the popular imagination.

Dickens published 15 novels, one of which was left unfinished at his death. These novels are, in order of publication with serialization dates given first: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837; 1837); The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839; 1838); The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839; 1839); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841; 1841); Barnaby Rudge (1841); Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844; 1844); Dombey and Son (1846-1848; 1848); The Personal History of David Copperfield (1849-1850; 1850); Bleak House (1852-1853; 1853); Hard Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1855-1857; 1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great Expectations (1860-1861; 1861); Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865; 1865); and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished; 1870).

Through his fiction Dickens did much to highlight the worst abuses of 19th-century society and to prick the public conscience. But running through the main plot of the novels are a host of subplots concerning fascinating and sometime ludicrous minor characters. Much of the humor of the novels derives from Dickens's descriptions of these characters and from his ability to capture their speech mannerisms and idiosyncratic traits.

A Early Fiction

Dickens was influenced by the reading of his youth and even by the stories his nursemaid created, such as the continuing saga of Captain Murderer. These childhood stories, as well as the melodramas and pantomimes he saw in the theater as a boy, fired Dickens's imagination throughout his life. His favorite boyhood readings included picaresque novels such as Don Quixote by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes and Tom Jones by English novelist Henry Fielding, as well as the Arabian Nights. In these long comic works, a roguish hero's exploits and adventures loosely link a series of stories.

The Pickwick Papers , for example, is a wandering comic epic in which Samuel Pickwick acts as a plump and cheerful Don Quixote, and Sam Weller as a cockney version of Quixote's knowing servant, Sancho Panza. The novel's preposterous characters, high spirits, and absurd adventures delighted readers.

After Pickwick, Dickens plunged into a bleaker world. In Oliver Twist , he traces an orphan's progress from the workhouse to the criminal slums of London. Nicholas Nickleby , his next novel, combines the darkness of Oliver Twist with the sunlight of Pickwick. Rascality and crime are part of its jubilant mirth.

The Old Curiosity Shop broke hearts across Britain and North America when it first appeared. Later readers, however, have found it excessively sentimental, especially the pathos surrounding the death of its child-heroine Little Nell. Dickens's next two works proved less popular with the public.

Barnaby Rudge , Dickens's first historical novel, revolves around anti-Catholic riots that broke out in London in 1780. The events in Martin Chuzzlewit become a vehicle for the novel's theme: selfishness and its evils. The characters, especially the Chuzzlewit family, present a multitude of perspectives on greed and unscrupulous self-interest. Dickens wrote it after a trip to the United States in 1842.

B Mature Fiction

Many critics have cited Dombey and Son as the work in which Dickens's style matures and he succeeds in bringing multiple episodes together in a tight narrative. Set in the world of railroad-building during the 1840s, Dombey and Son looks at the social effects of the profit-driven approach to business. The novel was immediately successful.

Dickens always considered David Copperfield to be his best novel and the one he most liked. The beginning seems to be autobiographical, with David's childhood experiences recalling Dickens's own in the blacking factory. The unifying theme of the book is the "undisciplined heart" of the young David, which leads to all his mistakes, including the greatest of them, his mistaken first marriage.

Bleak House ushers in Dickens's final period as a satirist and social critic. A court case involving an inheritance forms the mainspring of the plot, and ultimately connects all of the characters in the novel. The dominant image in the book is fog, which envelops, entangles, veils, and obscures. The fog stands for the law, the courts, vested interests, and corrupt institutions. Dickens had a long-standing dislike of the legal system and protracted lawsuits from his days as a reporter in the courts.

A novel about industry, Hard Times , followed Bleak House in 1854. In Hard Times , Dickens satirizes the theories of political economists through exaggerated characters such as Mr. Bounderby, the self-made man motivated by greed, and Mr. Gradgrind, the schoolmaster who emphasizes facts and figures over all else. In Bounderby's mines, lives are ground down; in Gradgrind's classroom, imagination and feelings are strangled.

The pervading image of Little Dorrit is the jail. Dickens's memory of his own father's time in debtors' prison adds an autobiographical touch to the novel. Little Dorrit also contains Dickens's invention of the Circumlocution Office, the archetype of all bureaucracies, where nothing ever gets done. Through this critique and others, such as the circular legal system in Bleak House , Dickens also investigated the ways in which art makes meaning and the workings of his own narrative style.

A Tale of Two Cities is set in London and Paris during the French Revolution (1789-1799). It stands out among the novels as a work driven by incident and event rather than by character and is critical both of the violence of the mob and of the abuses of the aristocracy, which prompted the revolution. The successful Tale of Two Cities was soon followed by Great Expectations , which marked a return to the more familiar Dickensian style of character-driven narrative. Its main character, Pip, tells his own story. Pip's "great expectations" are to lead an idle life of luxury. Through Pip, Dickens exposes that ideal as false.

Dickens's last complete novel is the dark and powerful Our Mutual Friend . A tale of greed and obsession, it takes place in an ill-lit and dirty London, with images of darkness and decay throughout. Only 6 of the 12 intended parts of Edwin Drood had been completed by the time Dickens died. He intended it as a mystery story concerning the disappearance of the title character.

IV Final Years

The end of Dickens's life was emotionally scarred by his separation from his dutiful wife, Catherine, as the result of his involvement with a young actress, Ellen Ternan. Catherine bore him ten children during their 22-year marriage, but he found her increasingly dull and unsympathetic. Against the advice of editors, Dickens published a letter vehemently justifying his actions to his readers, who would otherwise have known nothing about them.

Following the separation, Dickens continued his hectic schedule of novel, story, essay, and letter writing (his collected letters alone stretch thousands of pages); reform activities; amateur theatricals and readings; in addition to nightly social engagements and long midnight walks through London. His energy had always seemed to his friends inhuman, but he maintained this activity in his later years in disregard of failing health. Dickens died of a stroke shortly after his farewell reading tour, while writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood .

V Achievement

Dickens's social critique in his novels was sharp and pointed. As his biographer Edgar Johnson observed in Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (1952), Dickens's criticism was aimed not just at "the cruelty of the workhouse and the foundling asylum, the enslavement of human beings in mines and factories, the hideous evil of slums where crime simmered and proliferated, the injustices of the law, and the cynical corruption of the lawmakers" but also at "the great evil permeating every field of human endeavour: the entire structure of exploitation on which the social order was founded."

British writer George Orwell felt that Dickens was not a revolutionary, however, despite his criticism of society's ills. Orwell points out that Dickens "has no constructive suggestions, not even a clear grasp of the nature of the society he is attacking, only an emotional perception that something is wrong." That instinctive feeling becomes so moving in the novels because Dickens made the injustices he hated concrete and specific, not abstract and general. His readers feel the abuses of 19th-century society as real through the life of his characters. Underlying and reinforcing that illusion of reality, however, is a rich and complicated system of symbolic imagery resulting from superb artistry.

Through his characters, Dickens also touched a range of readers, which was perhaps his greatest talent. As his friend John Forster wrote, his stories enthralled "judges on the bench and boys in the street" alike. The illiterate, often too poor to buy instalments themselves, pooled their pennies and got someone to read aloud to them.

Near the end of the serialization of The Old Curiosity Shop , crowds thronged to a New York pier to await the ship from London carrying the latest instalment. As it came to the dock people roared, "Is Little Nell dead?" The pathetic death of the novel's child-heroine, Nell Trent, became one of the most celebrated scenes in 19th-century fiction. Such public concern over Little Nell's end guaranteed that Dickens's social message would be heard, not only by his avid readers, but also by those in power.

Dickens was a careful craftsman, with a strong sense of design; his books were strictly outlined. Any current notions that Dickens's novels are long because he was paid by the word, or sloppy because he wrote them under pressure of monthly deadlines, are simply untrue. What organizes Dickens's stories is sometimes not apparent at first glance, although it makes sense in novels that emphasize character. It is the logic of psychology, the tensions and contradictions of our drives and emotions, which Dickens plumbed, laying side by side the best and the worst of the human heart. This is a very different logic from the order of realism that rests on common sense. Dickens detested common sense, seeing in its seeming obviousness a form of tyranny.

The theater was a crucial influence on Dickens's work. As a young man Dickens tried to go on stage, but he missed his audition because of a cold. Not only did Dickens later write comic plays, melodramas, and libretti (words for musical dramas), he was also often involved in amateur theatricals for good causes, and spent his last two decades reading his own stories to packed audiences. Dickens's readings were as much a sensation in England and America as was his writing, and they proved as profitable. The readings revealed the part of the man that made him a practiced magician and hypnotist as well.

Dickens's love of the theatrical makes his works lend themselves readily to media adaptations. Motion-picture or television versions exist for almost every one of them. A Christmas Carol was one of the earliest to be adapted, first appearing as the silent film Scrooge (1901), directed by Walter R. Booth. The most notable adaptations include A Christmas Carol (1938), directed by Edwin L. Marin and starring Reginald Owen, and, probably the most famous of all, A Christmas Carol (1951), directed by Brian Desmond Hart and starring Alastair Sim. A later production titled Scrooged (1988) was directed by Richard Donner and starred Bill Murray. David Lean directed the most famous of the many versions of Great Expectations (1946). The film Oliver! (1968), a musical based on Oliver Twist and directed by Carol Reed, won six Academy Awards. Nowadays people are probably more familiar with the many BBC television miniseries productions of Dickens's works.

Contributed By: Laurie Langbauer, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Professor of English, University of North Carolina. Author of Novels of Everyday Life: The Series in English Fiction, 1850-1930.

September 6, 2024

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Short Bio » Writer » Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was an English writer . He is regarded as one of the finest writers in English language. He is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian Period. He is renowned for creating some of the finest fictional characters ever. The Pickwick Papers , Oliver Twist , David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol are few of his notable literature. Charles Dickens is one of the most famous novelists of all time.

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812. He was born to John Dickens and Elizabeth Dickens from Landport, Hampshire, England. His father was thrown in Debtors Prison when he was a child. For this reason, Charles Dickens had to leave school. She started to work in factories from an early age. At age 20 he wanted to become an entertainer. He was full of energy and did mimicry at the time. He landed an acting audition but missed it due to cold. Before Charles Dickens got another shot at fame in acting he had already set out to become a writer. Charles Dickens rose to fame with “The Pickwick Papers” in 1836. He was using the pseudonym Boz as the time. Most of his novels used to come out in shilling installments before being published as a full volume. This helped him to edit characters to readers and his best interests. His success as a novelist continued with the release of “Oliver Twist” in 1838. Oliver Twist is one of Charles Dickens greatest works. A young Queen Victoria at the time read both of his novels and was quite fond of them. He was by then an internationally famous writer. His later works in Dombey and Son” and “David Copperfield” were better written and serious themed than his earlier work. David Copperfield became one of his greatest works ever.

Charles Dickens married Catherine Dickens in 1936. The couple had 10 children born to them. Charles and Catherine separated in 1858. Charles Dickens was the believer in Christianity. But he had issues with institutions and their rules of religions. On 9 June 1870 at the age of 58 Charles Dickens died of a stroke.

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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. His family moved to London in 1822. The Dickens family often had money problems. For a while Charles had to leave school to work in a factory. He later wrote about the difficult working conditions he experienced.

Dickens finished school for good at age 15 and went to work. He wrote stories and articles for magazines and newspapers. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers , was published in 1837.

He wrote many famous books. Oliver Twist (1838) tells the story of an orphan boy in London. A Christmas Carol (1843) became one of the most popular Christmas stories of all time. Another novel, called David Copperfield (1850), was based partly on Dickens’ childhood. In many of his later books, Dickens wrote about social problems that worried him. For example, his book Hard Times (1854) is about problems faced by factory workers.

In his later years, Dickens wrote less. He had grown tired. He published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. It is a novel about the French Revolution. Great Expectations was published from 1860 to 1861. Dickens died on June 9, 1870.

Charles Dickens almost became a professional actor.

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Charles Dickens: Biography, Novels, and Literary Style

Written by MasterClass

Last updated: Jul 27, 2022 • 7 min read

One of the most famous British authors of all time, Charles Dickens’s literary style is so unique and influential it has its own adjective: Dickensian. Learn more about his life and novels.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Biography —> Works ]

In 1829 he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor's Commons Courts, and in 1830 he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker. By 1832 he had become a very successful shorthand reporter of Parliamentary debates in the House of Commons, and began work as a reporter for a newspaper.

In 1833 his relationship with Maria Beadnell ended, probably because her parents did not think him a good match (a not very flattering version of her would appear years later in Little Dorrit). In the same year his first published story appeared, and was followed, very shortly thereafter, by a number of other stories and sketches. In 1834, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the soon to be famous pseudonym "Boz." His impecunious father (who was the original of Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield , as Dickens's mother was the original for the querulous Mrs. Nickleby) was once again arrested for debt, and Charles, much to his chagrin, was forced to come to his aid. Later in his life both of his parents (and his brothers) were frequently after him for money. In 1835 he met and became engaged to Catherine Hogarth.

After the success of Pickwick , Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate, although he continued, as well, his journalistic and editorial activities. Oliver Twist was begun in 1837, and continued in monthly parts until April 1839. It was in 1837, too, that Catherine's younger sister Mary, whom Dickens idolized, died. She too would appear, in various guises, in Dickens's later fiction. A son, Charles, the first of ten children, was born in the same year.

Nicholas Nickleby got underway in 1838, and continued through October 1839, in which year Dickens resigned as editor of Bentley's Miscellany . The first number of Master Humphrey's Clock appeared in 1840, and The Old Curiosity Shop , begun in Master Humphrey , continued through February 1841, when Dickens commenced Barnaby Rudge , which continued through November of that year. In 1842 he embarked on a visit to Canada and the United States in which he advocated international copyright (unscrupulous American publishers, in particular, were pirating his works) and the abolition of slavery. His American Notes , which created a furor in America (he commented unfavorably, for one thing, on the apparently universal — and, so far as Dickens was concerned, highly distasteful — American predilection for chewing tobacco and spitting the juice), appeared in October of that year. Martin Chuzzlewit , part of which was set in a not very flatteringly portrayed America, was begun in 1843, and ran through July 1844. A Christmas Carol , the first of Dickens's enormously successful Christmas books — each, though they grew progressively darker, intended as "a whimsical sort of masque intended to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts" — appeared in December 1843.

In that same year, Dickens and his family toured Italy, and were much abroad, in Italy, Switzerland, and France, until 1847. Dickens returned to London in December 1844, when The Chimes was published, and then went back to Italy, not to return to England until July of 1845. 1845 also brought the debut of Dickens's amateur theatrical company, which would occupy a great deal of his time from then on. The Cricket and the Hearth , a third Christmas book, was published in December, and his Pictures From Italy appeared in 1846 in the "Daily News," a paper which Dickens founded and of which, for a short time, he was the editor.

In 1847, in Switzerland, Dickens began Dombey and Son , which ran until April 1848. The Battle of Life appeared in December of that year. In 1848 Dickens also wrote an autobiographical fragment, directed and acted in a number of amateur theatricals, and published what would be his last Christmas book, The Haunted Man , in December. 1849 saw the birth of David Copperfield , which would run through November 1850. In that year, too, Dickens founded and installed himself as editor of the weekly Household Words , which would be succeeded, in 1859, by All the Year Round , which he edited until his death. 1851 found him at work on Bleak House , which appeared monthly from 1852 until September 1853.

In 1853 he toured Italy with Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins , and gave, upon his return to England, the first of many public readings from his own works. Hard Times began to appear weekly in Household Words in 1854, and continued until August. Dickens's family spent the summer and the fall in Boulogne. In 1855 they arrived in Paris in October, and Dickens began Little Dorrit , which continued in monthly parts until June 1857. In 1856 Dickens and Wilkie Collins collaborated on a play, The Frozen Deep , and Dickens purchased Gad's Hill, an estate he had admired since childhood.

The Dickens family spent the summer of 1857 at a renovated Gad's Hill. Hans Christian Anderson , whose fairy tales Dickens admired greatly, visited them there and quickly wore out his welcome. Dickens's theatrical company performed The Frozen Deep for the Queen, and when a young actress named Ellen Ternan joined the cast in August, Dickens fell in love with her. In 1858, in London, Dickens undertook his first public readings for pay, and quarreled with his old friend and rival, the great novelist Thackeray. More importantly, it was in that year that, after a long period of difficulties, he separated from his wife. They had been for many years "tempermentally unsuited" to each other. Dickens, charming and brilliant though he was, was also fundamentally insecure emotionally, and must have been extraordinarily difficult to live with.

In 1859 his London readings continued, and he began a new weekly, All the Year Round . The first installment of A Tale of Two Cities appeared in the opening number, and the novel continued through November. By 1860, the Dickens family had taken up residence at Gad's Hill. Dickens, during a period of retrospection, burned many personal letters, and re-read his own David Copperfield , the most autobiographical of his novels, before beginning Great Expectations , which appeared weekly until August 1861.

1861 found Dickens embarking upon another series of public readings in London, readings which would continue through the next year. In 1863, he did public readings both in Paris and London, and reconciled with Thackeray just before the latter's death. Our Mutual Friend was begun in 1864, and appeared monthly until November 1865. Dickens was in poor health, due largely to consistent overwork.

In 1865, an incident occurred which disturbed Dickens greatly, both psychologically and physically: Dickens and Ellen Ternan, returning from a Paris holiday, were badly shaken up in a railway accident in which a number of people were injured.

A tribute to Dickens in the Hornet , 15 June 1870. Click on the image to enlarge it and for more details.

1866 brought another series of public readings, this time in various locations in England and Scotland, and still more public readings, in England and Ireland, were undertaken in 1867. Dickens was now really unwell but carried on, compulsively, against his doctor's advice. Late in the year he embarked on an American reading tour, which continued into 1868. Dickens's health was worsening, but he took over still another physically and mentally exhausting task, editorial duties at All the Year Round .

During 1869, his readings continued, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, until at last he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. Further provincial readings were cancelled, but he began upon The Mystery of Edwin Drood .

• Dickens's 1842 Reading Tour: Launching the Copyright Question in Tempestuous Seas
• Dickens's 1867-68 Reading Tour: Re-Opening the Copyright Question

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Charles Dickens Biography and Work

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Charles Dickens was a British writer who is widely considered to be one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era. He was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, and died on June 9, 1870, in Kent, England. Over the course of his career, he wrote some of the most beloved and enduring works of English literature, including “Oliver Twist,” “David Copperfield,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” and “Great Expectations.”

Early Life and Education

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Charles Dickens was the second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his family was considered to be middle-class. However, when Charles was just twelve years old, his father was imprisoned for debt, and the family was forced to move to a small, dingy house in Camden Town, London. This experience had a profound effect on Charles, and it would later become a recurring theme in his work.

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Despite his family’s financial struggles, Charles received a good education. He attended a series of private schools, and he was an avid reader from a young age. In his early teens, he became an apprentice at a law firm, but he quickly realized that he didn’t enjoy the work. Instead, he began to write stories and sketches, which he submitted to various publications.

Early Writing Career

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Dickens’ first published work was a collection of sketches called “Sketches by Boz,” which appeared in a monthly magazine called “The Monthly Magazine” in 1833. These sketches were a humorous and satirical look at everyday life in London, and they were an immediate success. Dickens’ style was witty, lively, and full of colorful characters, and he quickly became a popular writer.

In 1836, Dickens published his first novel, “The Pickwick Papers,” which was an instant sensation. The novel was serialized in monthly installments, and readers eagerly awaited each new chapter. “The Pickwick Papers” was a comic masterpiece, full of memorable characters and hilarious situations, and it established Dickens as one of the most important writers of his time.

Later Works

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Over the next several years, Dickens published a series of highly successful novels, including “Oliver Twist,” “Nicholas Nickleby,” “David Copperfield,” and “Bleak House.” These novels were all serialized in monthly installments, and they were eagerly read by a public hungry for the latest installment.

In addition to his novels, Dickens was also a prolific writer of short stories, essays, and articles. He wrote for several different publications, and he was known for his sharp wit and incisive commentary on the social issues of his time.

As he grew older, Dickens’ health began to decline, and he suffered from a series of physical and emotional ailments. In 1858, he separated from his wife, Catherine, and he began a long and difficult affair with a young actress named Ellen Ternan.

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Despite his personal problems, Dickens continued to write, and he produced some of his greatest works in the final years of his life. In 1859, he published “A Tale of Two Cities,” which is widely considered to be his masterpiece. The novel is set during the French Revolution, and it explores themes of love, sacrifice, and redemption.

In 1861, Dickens began a series of public readings of his works, which were enormously popular. He traveled extensively throughout Britain and America, and he became a celebrity in his own right. However, the strain of these readings took a toll on his health, and he suffered a series of strokes in the early 1870s.

Themes and Style

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Charles Dickens is known for his vivid and colorful style of writing, which is characterized by his use of vivid descriptions, memorable characters, and sharp dialogue. His works are often seen as a reflection of the social and economic issues of his time, and they explore themes such as poverty, inequality, and injustice.

One of the recurring themes in Dickens’ work is the plight of the poor and marginalized. He often wrote about characters who were struggling to survive in a world that was stacked against them. In works such as “Oliver Twist” and “David Copperfield,” he portrayed the harsh realities of life for the urban poor, including poverty, hunger, and disease.

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Another important theme in Dickens’ work is the power of love and human connection. In novels such as “Great Expectations” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” he explored the transformative power of love, and he portrayed characters who were able to overcome great adversity through their relationships with others.

Dickens was also a master of social satire, and he used his writing to critique the institutions and values of Victorian society. In works such as “Bleak House” and “Hard Times,” he criticized the hypocrisy and moral corruption of the upper classes, and he exposed the harsh realities of life for the working poor.

Charles Dickens Biography and Work:- Overall, Charles Dickens’ style and themes continue to resonate with readers today. His works are timeless reminders of the struggles and triumphs of the human experience, and they continue to inspire and entertain audiences around the world.

Charles Dickens was a prolific and influential writer who left an indelible mark on English literature. Through his vivid descriptions, memorable characters, and sharp wit, he explored the social and economic issues of his time and captured the essence of the human experience. His works continue to be read and loved today, and they serve as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling and the importance of social justice. Dickens’ legacy is a testament to the power of literature to inspire and transform, and he remains one of the most beloved and revered writers of all time.

Q. What is Charles Dickens best known for?

Ans. Charles Dickens is best known for his vivid descriptions, memorable characters, and social commentary in his novels. Some of his most famous works include “Oliver Twist,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Great Expectations,” and “David Copperfield.”

Q. When was Charles Dickens born?

Ans. Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812.

Q. Where was Charles Dickens born?

Ans. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England.

Q. What was Charles Dickens’ family like?

Ans. Charles Dickens was the second of eight children. His father, John Dickens, was a naval clerk who struggled with finances, and his mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was a homemaker. Dickens’ difficult childhood and family circumstances would

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]   . If you have written anything relating to dickens, please contribute it! Thanks for dropping by! Rob English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens's works are charactericized by attacks on social evils, unjustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens's lively good, bad and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers. Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which created misery for the class of low-paid workers and gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. He worked in a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his family was in Marshalea debtor's prison in 1824 - later this period found its way to the novel Little Dorrit (1855-57). In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk, and then worked as a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. He wrote for True Son (1830-32), Mirror of Parliament (1832-34) and the Morning Chronicle (1834-36). He was in the 1830s a contributor to Monthly Magazine, and The Evening Chronicle and edited Bentley's Miscellany. In the 1840s Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the London Daily News. These years as a journalist left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious attitude towards unjust laws. His sharp ear for conversation helped him reveal characters through their own words. Dickens's career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodical. His SKETCHES BY BOZ and THE PICKWICK PAPERS were published in 1836; he married in the same year the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, Catherine Hogart. However, some people suspected that he was more fond of her sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837. Dickens requested that he be buried next to her when he died and wore Mary's ring all his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens had with Catherine 10 children but they were separated in 1858. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s. The Pickwick Papers were stories about a group of rather odd individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath and elsewhere. Dickens's novels first appeared in monthly instalments, including OLIVER TWIST (1837-39), which depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, NICHOLAS NICKELBY (1838-39), a tale of young Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune, and OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (1840-41). Among his later works are DAVID COPPERFIELD (1849-50), where Dickens used his own personal experiences of work in a factory, BLEAK HOUSE (1852-53), A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859), set in the years of the French Revolution. GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1860-61), the story of Pip (Philip Pirrip), was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. The unfinished mystery novel THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD was published in 1870. From the 1840s Dickens spent much time travelling and campaigning against many of the social evils of his time. In addition he gave talks and reading, wrote pamphlets, plays, and letters. In the 1850s Dickens was founding editor of Household World and its successor All the Year Round (1859-70). In 1844-45 he lived in Italy, Switzerland and Paris. He gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States in 1858-68. From 1860 Dickens lived at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent. He died at Gadshill on June 9, 1870. Although Dickens's career as a novelist received much attention, he produced hundreds of essays and edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. Dickens distinquished himself as an essayis in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. 'A Visit to Newgate' (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. In 'A Small Star in in the East' reveals the working conditions on mills and 'Mr. Barlow' (1869) draws a portrait of a unsensitive tutor. Contrary to popular belief, the notion that Dickens's novels are lengthy because he was paid "by the word" is largely inaccurate. In reality, Dickens was not compensated based on the number of words written, but rather on an installment payment basis. Dickens chose to release his novels in a serialized format, meaning they were published in installments over an extended period of time, similar to how modern soap operas are broadcasted daily or sitcoms weekly. This format was employed for a number of his famous works, starting with during 1836-37, which was issued in 20 parts over the course of 19 months. The installment formula was a successful one that created strong buyer demand each month due to the anticipation for the next part of the series. It also allowed Dickens and his publishers to receive faster and more consistent income without having to wait for an entire entire novel to be written before any payment was received. Fiction Fiction Non-Fiction Non-Fiction Short Story Short Story Other Authors Other Authors . Copyright © 2022, dickens-literature.com . Privacy Policy . 266 IMAGES Charles Dickens Biography The Biography of Charles Dickens Biography and best books of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Biography of Victorian Novelist Charles Dickens cover of Charles Dickens a pictorial biography by J.B. Priestley VIDEO Biography of Charles Dickens|| Handwritten notes||#notes #shorts @SubjectLearners Biography of "Charles Dickens" by @SubjectLearners Charles Dickens Charles Dickens |Biography in English Fun Facts About Charles Dickens Charles Dickens by G. K. Chesterton COMMENTS Charles Dickens Charles Dickens (born February 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England—died June 9, 1870, Gad's Hill, near Chatham, Kent) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our ... A Short Biography of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Biography. Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens) was born in Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812. Charles was the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786-1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (1789-1863). The Dickens family moved to London in 1814 and two years later to ... Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (/ ˈ d ɪ k ɪ n z /; 7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic.He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. [1] His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics ... Charles Dickens: Biography, British Author, Editor Quick Facts. FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens BORN: February 7, 1812 DIED: June 9, 1870 BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England SPOUSE: Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1836 ... Charles Dickens Biography Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) was a Victorian author whose novels include A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations. This short biography tells about his work and little-known aspects of his life. Table of Contents. The Childhood of Charles Dickens 1812 - 1824. Dickens Enters the Workforce 1827 - 1831. Short Bio of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens biography. Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) Victorian novelist who created some of the most memorable characters in English Literature, while also criticising the worst excesses of Victorian society. Novels included Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and David Copperfield.. Early life. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. A Short Biography Of Charles Dickens Born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, Dickens faced financial hardship from an early age. His father's imprudent spending led to his imprisonment for debt when Charles was only 12 years old. Forced to leave school and work in a factory, Dickens's lack of formal education did not deter him from pursuing a career in writing. Charles Dickens Biography Catherine Dickens. (1815-1879) - Charles Dickens' wife, with whom he fathered 10 children. She was born in Scotland on May 19, 1815 and came to England with her family in 1834. Catherine was the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle where Dickens was a young journalist. Biography of Charles Dickens, English Novelist Updated on June 18, 2019. Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812-June 9, 1870) was a popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and to this day he remains a giant in British literature. Dickens wrote numerous books that are now considered classics, including "David Copperfield," "Oliver Twist," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Great Expectations." Biography of Charles Dickens The biography covers Dickens' his entire life and career, from his impoverished childhood, to successful author and social reformer. Because this biography was originally written in 1876, it does not mention any scandalous details such as his purported extramarital affair. On the whole, however, this Dickens biography is still quite useful for ... Charles Dickens Biography Dickens became a regular visitor at the home of George Hogarth, editor of The Evening Chronicle, and in 1835 became engaged to Hogarth's daughter Catherine. Publication of the collected Sketches by Boz in 1836 gave Dickens sufficient income to marry Catherine Hogarth that year. The marriage proved unhappy. III Literary Career. Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author When Charles Dickens first began to publish the amusing sketches and stories that would later be collected in his first book, the pseudonymously published Sketches by Boz (1836), he was a little-known newspaper reporter working in London. By the end of his amazing career, he had produced an enormous body of work as both author and editor, including such classic and perennially popular novels ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens. February 7, 2023. Charles Dickens was an English writer. He is regarded as one of the finest writers in English language. He is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian Period. He is renowned for creating some of the finest fictional characters ever. The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Christmas ... Charles Dickens It is a novel about the French Revolution. Great Expectations was published from 1860 to 1861. Dickens died on June 9, 1870. Charles Dickens almost became a professional actor. Charles Dickens was one of the most famous English writers of the 1800s. Although his books are often very funny, they show many of the difficulties of living in his ... Charles Dickens: Biography, Novels, and Literary Style Charles Dickens: Biography, Novels, and Literary Style. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Jul 27, 2022 • 7 min read. One of the most famous British authors of all time, Charles Dickens's literary style is so unique and influential it has its own adjective: Dickensian. Learn more about his life and novels. PDF Charles Dickens: Biography Charles Dickens: Biography The most popular storyteller of his time, a zealous social reformer, the esteemed leader of the English literary scene and a wholehearted friend to the poor, Charles Dickens was an unrestrained satirist who spared no one. His writings defined the complications, ironies, diversions and Dickens: A Brief Biography Dickens: A Brief Biography. harles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory ... Charles Dickens Biography and Work Charles Dickens was a British writer who is widely considered to be one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era. He was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, and died on June 9, 1870, in Kent, England. Over the course of his career, he wrote some of the most beloved and enduring works of English literature, including "Oliver Twist," "David Copperfield," "A Tale of ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which created misery for the class of low-paid workers and gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. ... 'A Visit to Newgate' (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. In 'A Small Star in in the East' reveals the working ... Charles Dickens bibliography The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) includes more than a dozen major novels, many short stories (including Christmas-themed stories and ghost stories), several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles.Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats. A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech.It recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and ... Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 Februari 1812 - 9 Juni 1870) adalah seorang penulis roman atau novel ternama dari Inggris [1] dari masa pemerintahan Ratu Victoria dari Britania Raya.. Dickens bahkan sampai sekarang masih populer dan semua bukunya masih bisa dibeli. Banyak dari buku-buku juga sudah dibuat menjadi film.Sepanjang kariernya Dickens mencapai popularitas mendunia, mendapatkan ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens - Wikipedia ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (İngilizce telaffuz: [ˈtʃɑrlz_ˈdɪkɪnz]; 7 Şubat 1812 - 9 Haziran 1870), İngiliz yazar ve toplum eleştirmeni. En unutulmaz kurgusal karakterlerden bazılarını yaratmasının yanında Victoria devrinin en iyi romancısı olarak kabul edilir. Yaşadığı sürede eserleri benzeri görülmemiş bir üne sahip oldu ve yirminci yüzyılda edebi dehası ... Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (7. února 1812, Portsmouth - 9. června 1870, Gadshill) byl britský spisovatel, publicista a novinář. Je považován za jednoho z největších romanopisců 19. století. Mezi jeho nejznámější díla patří Nadějné vyhlídky, Malá Dorritka, David Copperfield, Ponurý dům, Oliver Twist, Vánoční koleda nebo Kronika Pickwickova klubu. Dickens family The Dickens family (and friends) in 1864 - (l-r) Charles Dickens Jr., Kate Dickens, Charles Dickens, Miss Hogarth, Mary Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Georgina Hogarth The Dickens family are the descendants of John Dickens, the father of the English novelist Charles Dickens.John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office and had eight children from his marriage to Elizabeth Barrow. Charles Dickens Charles Dickens syntyi Portsmouthissa vuonna 1812 John ja Elizabeth Dickensin toiseksi lapseksi. Hänen isänsä oli laivaston virkamies, joka siirrettiin takaisin Lontooseen kun Charles oli kolmevuotias. [2]Lontoosta Dickensit muuttivat Chathamiin, jossa Charles Dickens kävi koulua ja menestyi siinä hyvin. 12-vuotiaana hänet laitettiin muutamaksi kuukaudeksi töihin ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens nel 1860 circa. Charles John Huffam Dickens noto come Charles Dickens (pron. /ˈtʃɑɹlz ˈdɪkɪnz/; Portsmouth, 7 febbraio 1812 - Higham, 9 giugno 1870) è stato uno scrittore, giornalista e reporter di viaggio britannico dell'età vittoriana.. Firma di Charles Dickens. Noto tanto per le sue prove umoristiche (Il circolo Pickwick) quanto per i suoi romanzi sociali (Oliver ... Charles Dickens Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Charles Dickens z córkami Charles John Huffam Dickens, wym. / tʃ ɑ r l z dʒ ɒ n ˈ h ʌ f ə m ˈ d ɪ k ɪ n z /, pseudonim Boz (ur. 7 lutego 1812 w Landport koło Portsmouth, zm. 9 czerwca 1870 w Gadshill koło Rochester w hrabstwie Kent) - angielski powieściopisarz.Uznawany za najwybitniejszego przedstawiciela powieści społeczno-obyczajowej w drugiej ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis