Born：7 February 1812　Landport, Portsmouth, England

　　Died：9 June 1870 　Gads Hill Place, Higham, Kent, England

　　Resting place：Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey

　　Occupation：Writer

　　Ethnicity：English

　　Citizenship：UK

　　Notable work：The Pickwick Papers,Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield,Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations

　　Signature

　　an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the worlds most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, but it was in the twentieth century that his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.

　　Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors prison. Though he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. He edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for childrens rights, education, and other social reforms.

　　Dickens rocketed to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, celebrated for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audiences reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wifes chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive lineaments. Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence, Ikey Solomon; His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes: In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor) and Mooney from a certain Looney, a beadle at Salisbury Square. Though his plots were carefully constructed, Dickens would often weave in elements harvested from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in hapennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.

　　Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow writersfrom Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwellfor itsrealism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry Jamesand Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism.

　　Life

　　Early years

　　2 Ordnance Terrace,Chatham, Dickenss home 18171822

　　Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at Landport in Portsea, the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily on duty in the district. Very soon after the birth of Charles the family moved to Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then, when he was four, to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early years seem to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy.

　　Illustration by Fred Bernard of Dickens at work in a shoe-blacking factory after his father had been sent to the Marshalsea, published in the 1892 edition of Forsters Life of Dickens

　　Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, especially the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by a near-photographic memory of the people and events, which he used in his writing. His fathers brief period as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame-school, and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter, in Chatham.This period came to an abrupt end when, because of financial difficulties, the Dickens family moved from Kent to Camden Town in London in 1822. Prone to living beyond his means, John Dickens was eventually imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors prison in Southwark London in 1824. Shortly afterwards, his wife and the youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, was boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, in Camden Town. Mrs. Roylance was a reduced old lady, long known to our family, whom Dickens later immortalised, with a few alterations and embellishments, as Mrs. Pipchin, in Dombey and Son. Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife and lame son, in Lant Street in The Borough. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop.On Sundayswith his sister Frances, free from her studies at the Royal Academy of Musiche spent the day at the Marshalsea.Dickens would later use the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit. To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warrens Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often cruel working conditions deeply impressed Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigors of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He would later write that he wondered how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. As he recalled to John Forster :The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecarys shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist.

　　The Marshalsea around 1897, after it had closed After only a few months in Marshalsea, John Dickenss paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him the sum of 450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was granted release from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs. Roylance.Although Dickens eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London, his mother Elizabeth Dickens did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory. The incident may have done much to confirm Dickenss view that a father should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere inside the home. I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back. His mothers failure to request his return was no doubt a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women.Righteous anger stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield: 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! The Wellington House Academy was not a good school. Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmasters sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr. Creakles Establishment in David Copperfield.Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Grays Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. Then, having learned Gurneys system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak Housewhose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of Dickenss own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to go to law.In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Marias parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.Journalism and early novelsIn 1832, at age 20, Dickens was energetic, full of good humour, enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, and lacked a clear sense of what he wanted to become, yet knowing he wanted to be famous. He was drawn to the theatre and landed an acting audition a Covent Garden, for which he prepared meticulously but which he missed because of a cold, ending his aspirations for a career on the stage. A year later he submitted his first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk to the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. He rented rooms at Furnivals Inn becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of piecesSketches by BozBoz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some yearspublished in 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout his literary career.

　　Catherine Hogarth Dickens by Samuel Lawrence .

　　The success of these sketches led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymours engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series or sketches, hired Phiz to provide the engravings to enhance the story. The resulting story was the The Pickwick Papers with the final instalment selling 40,000 copies.In November 1836 Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentleys Miscellany, a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836 as he finished the last instalments of The Pickwick Papers he began writing the beginning instalments ofOliver Twistwriting as many as 90 pages a monthwhile continuing work on Bentleys, writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of Dickens better known stories, with dialogue that transferred well to the stage and more importantly, it was the first Victorian with a child protagonist.

　　An 1839 portrait of a young Charles Dickens byDaniel Maclise

　　On 2 April 1836, after a one year engagement during which he wrote The Pickwick Papers, he marriedCatherine Thomson Hogarth , the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they returned to lodgings at Furnivals Inn.The first of ten children, Charley, was born in January 1837, and a few months later the family set uphome in Bloomsbury at 48 Doughty Street, London, from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickenss younger brother Frederick and Catherines 17-year-old sister Mary moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. Dickens idealised her and is thought to have drawn on memories of her for his later descriptions of Rose Maylie, Little Nell and Florence Dombey. He grief was so great that he was unable to make the deadline for the June instalment of Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that　month as well.At the same time, his success as a novelist continued, Nicholas Nickleby , The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty as part of the Master Humphreys Clock series all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.First visit to the United States

　　In 1842, Dickens and his wife made his first trip to the United States and Canada. At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone, to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickenss death in 1870.

　　Sketch of Dickens in 1842 during American Tour.

　　Sketch of Dickenss sister Fanny, bottom leftHe described his impressions in a travelogue entitled American Notes for General Circulation. Some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit also drew on these first-hand experiences. Dickens includes in Notes a powerful condemnation of slavery, which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad. During his visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures and raising the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America. He persuaded twenty five writers, headed by Washington Irving to sign a petition for him to take to congress, but the press were generally hostile to this saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated.

　　In the early 1840s Dickens showed an interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism. Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, written in 1843, which was followed by The Chimes in 1844 and The Cricket on the Hearth in 1845. Of these A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping in to an old tradition, did much promote a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story were planted in Dickenss mind during a trip to Manchester to witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, 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. 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 as he walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed.

　　After living briefly abroad in Italy Dickens travelled to Switzerland ; it was here he began work on Dombey and Son. This and David Copperfield mark a significant artistic break in Dickenss career as his novels became more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early works.

　　Philanthropy

　　In May 1846 Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens about setting up a home for the redemption of fallen women from the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in the Lime Grove section of Shepherds Bush, which he was to manage for ten years, setting the house rules and reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents.Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859.

　　Middle years

　　In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he would write Bleak House , Hard Times and Little Dorrit . It was here he indulged in the amateur theatricals which are described in Forsters Life. In 1856, the income he was earning from his writing allowed him to buyGads Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeares Henry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him.

　　Ellen Ternan, 1858.

　　In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his protg Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell deeply in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, which was to last the rest of his life. Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18 when he made the decision, which went strongly against Victorian convention, to separate from his wife, Catherine, in 1858divorce was still unthinkable for someone as famous as he was. When Catherine left, never to see her husband again, she took with her one child, leaving the other children to be raised by her sister Georgina who chose to stay at Gads Hill.

　　During this period, whilst pondering about giving public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached by Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis through a charitable appeal. His Drooping Buds essay inHousehold Words earlier in 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospitals founders to have been the catalyst for the hospitals success. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospitals founder Charles West, to preside and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing one of February 9, 1858 alone raised 3,000.

　　After separating from Catherine, Dickens undertook a series of hugely popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism, were to absorb most of his creative energies for the next decade, in which he was to write only two more novels. His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 different towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Dickens continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes in Nicholas Nickleby, but more importantly he found an outlet in public readings. In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more the following year in England and Ireland.

　　At his desk in 1858

　　Major works, A Tale of Two Cities ; and Great Expectations soon followed and would prove resounding successes. During this time he was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor to, the journals Household Words and All the Year Round .

　　In early September 1860, in a field behind Gads Hill, Dickens made a great bonfire of almost his entire correspondenceonly those letters on business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself with a Canon Benham, and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. That the two had a son who died in infancy was alleged by Dickens daughter, Kate Perugini, whom Gladys Storey had interviewed before her death in 1929, and published her account in Dickens and Daughter, although no contemporary evidence exists. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her a financially independent woman. Claire Tomalins book, The Invisible Woman, argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. The book was subsequently turned into a play, Little Nell, by Simon Gray.

　　In the same period, Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal, becoming one of the early members of The Ghost Club.

　　Last years

　　Crash scene after the Staplehurst rail crash

　　On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge under repair. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water and saved some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, The Signal-Man, in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861.

　　Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal. Although physically unharmed, Dickens never really recovered from the trauma of the Staplehurst crash, and his normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinishedThe Mystery of Edwin Drood.

　　Second visit to the United States

　　On 9 November 1867, Dickens sailed from Liverpool for his second American reading tour. Landing at Boston, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher James Thomas Fields. In early December, the readings beganhe was to 76 readings, netting 19,000, from December 1867 to April 1868and Dickens spent the month shuttling between Boston and New York, where alone he gave 22 readings at Steinway Hall for this period. Although he had started to suffer from what he called the true American catarrh, he kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in Central Park.