Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)
Charles Dickens is much loved for his great contribution to classical English literature. He is the quintessential Victorian author: his epic stories, vivid characters and exhaustive depiction of contemporary life are unforgettable.
Charles Dickens is much loved for his great contribution to classical English literature. He is the quintessential Victorian author: his epic stories, vivid characters and exhaustive depiction of contemporary life are unforgettable.
His own story is one of rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. The good fortune of being sent to school at the age of nine was short-lived because his father, inspiration for the character of Mr Micawber in clergymanDavid Copperfield, was imprisoned for bad debt. The entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was sent to work in Warren's blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair. After three years he was returned to school but the experience was never forgotten and became fiction
alised in two of his better-known novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations.
Like many others, he began his literary career as a journalist. His own father became a reporter and Charles began with The Mirror of Parliament and The True Sun. Then in 1833 he became parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. With new contacts in the press he was able to publish a series of sketches under the pseudonym 'Boz'. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth who edited Sketches by Boz. Within the same month came the publication of the highly successful Pickwick Papers, and from that point on there was no looking back.
As well as a huge list of novels he published autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organisations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His energy was inexhaustible and he spent much time abroad - for example lecturing against slavery in the United States and touring Italy with companions Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins, a contemporary writer who inspired Dickens' final unfinished novel Mystery of Edwin Drood.
He was estranged from his wife in 1858 after the birth of their ten children, maintained relations with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan and died of a stroke in 1870. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.
Works:
Titles in Fiction category:
∙ The Battle of Life, 
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its  ...
∙ Bleak House   
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or ...
∙ A Child's History of England, 
If you look at a Map of the World, you will see, in the left-hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two Islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, and Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater part of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little  ...
∙ The Chimes,   
Here are not many people - and as it is desirable that a story- teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: ...
∙ A Christmas Carol,     
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
∙ The Cricket on the Hearth,
The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little  ...
∙ David Copperfield   
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I
record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was  ...
∙ Dombey and Son   
Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was ...

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