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Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
 The
son of a naval clerk, Dickens spent his early childhood in
London and in Chatham. When he was 12 his father was
imprisoned for debt, and Charles was compelled to work in a
blacking warehouse. He never forgot this double humiliation.
At 17 he was a court stenographer, and later he was an expert
parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle. His
sketches, mostly of London life (signed Boz), began appearing
in periodicals in 1833, and the collection Sketches by Boz
(1836) was a success.
Soon Dickens was
commissioned to write burlesque sporting sketches; the result
was The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
(1836–37), which promptly made Dickens and his characters,
especially Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick, famous. In 1836 he
married Catherine Hogarth, who was to bear him 10 children;
the marriage, however, was never happy. Dickens had a tender
regard for Catherine's sister Mary Hogarth, who died young,
and a lifelong friendship with another sister, Georgina
Hogarth.
The early-won fame
never deserted Dickens. His readers were eager and ever more
numerous, and Dickens worked vigorously for them, producing
novels that appeared first in monthly installments and then
were made into books. Oliver Twist (in book form, 1838)
was followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1839) and by two
works originally intended to start a series called Master
Humphrey's Clock: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) and Barnaby
Rudge (1841).
Dickens wrote
rapidly, sometimes working on more than one novel at a time,
and usually finished an installment just when it was due.
Haste did not prevent his loosely strung and intricately
plotted books from being the most popular novels of his
day.
Dickens lived in
Italy in 1844 and in Switzerland in 1846. Dombey and Son
(1848) was the first in a string of triumphant novels
including David Copperfield (1850), his own favorite
novel, which was partly autobiographical; Bleak House
(1853); Hard Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1857);
A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great Expectations
(1861); and Our Mutual Friend (1865). In 1856 he bought
his long-desired country home at Gadshill. Two years later,
because of Dickens's attentions to a young actress, Ellen
Ternan, his wife ended their marriage by formal separation.
Her sister Georgina remained with Dickens to care for his
household and the younger children.
Dickens was
working furiously, editing and contributing to the magazines Household
Words (1850–59) and All the Year Round
(1858–70) and managing amateur theatricals. To these labors
he added platform readings from his own works; three tours in
the British Isles (1858, 1861–65, 1866–67) were followed
by one in America (1867–68). When he undertook another
English tour of readings (1869–70), his health broke, and he
died soon afterward, leaving his last novel, The Mystery of
Edwin Drood, unfinished. His grave is in Westminster Abbey
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