Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens lived from 7 February 1812 to 9 June 1870. He worked as an English writer and journalist, bringing to life some of the most famous characters in fiction. Many consider him the finest novelist of the Victorian period. During his lifetime, his books were hugely popular, and by the 1900s, experts and critics saw him as a literary genius. People still read his novels and short stories widely.

Dickens was born in Portsmouth. When he was 12, his father was sent to a debtors' prison, so Charles left school to work in a factory that made boot-blacking. After three years, he went back to school and later started his writing career as a journalist. For two decades, he edited a weekly journal. He wrote 15 novels, 5 novellas, and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces. He also gave many lectures and public readings, wrote countless letters, and pushed hard for children's rights, education, and other social changes.

His big break came in 1836 with the serial publication of *The Pickwick Papers*. It became a sensation, especially after the character Sam Weller appeared in the fourth episode, leading to merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years, Dickens was an international celebrity, known for his humour, satire, and sharp observations of people and society. Most of his novels came out in monthly or weekly instalments, a format he helped pioneer that became the standard for Victorian fiction. He used cliffhanger endings to keep readers hooked. Because the instalments let him gauge audience reactions, he sometimes changed his plots and characters based on feedback. For instance, after his wife's podiatrist complained that the character Miss Mowcher in *David Copperfield* seemed to mock her own disabilities, Dickens added positive traits to the character. He built his plots carefully and often wove in current events. Even poor people who couldn't read would pay a halfpenny to hear each new episode read aloud, creating a new audience for fiction.

His 1843 novella *A Christmas Carol* remains extremely popular and still inspires adaptations in all kinds of media. *Oliver Twist* and *Great Expectations* are also frequently adapted, and like many of his novels, they bring to mind early Victorian London. His 1853 novel *Bleak House* satirised the legal system and helped fuel a reform movement that led to legal changes in England in the 1870s. *A Tale of Two Cities* (1859), set in London and Paris, is considered his best-known historical fiction. As the most famous celebrity of his time, he gave public reading tours later in his career to meet public demand. The word "Dickensian" now describes things that remind people of his work, like poor social or working conditions, or grotesquely funny characters.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now 393 Commercial Road) in Landport, Portsea Island (Portsmouth), Hampshire. He was the second of eight children born to Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow, 1789–1863) and John Dickens (1785–1851). His father worked as a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed there. John asked Christopher Huffam, a Royal Navy rigger and head of a well-known firm, to be Charles's godfather. Huffam is thought to have inspired the character Paul Dombey, a shipping company owner in *Dombey and Son* (1848).

In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, and the family moved to Norfolk Street in Fitzrovia. When Charles was four, they moved to Sheerness and then to Chatham, Kent, where he lived until age 11. His early years seemed happy, though he later described himself as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." He spent time outdoors and read a lot, including picaresque novels by Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as *Robinson Crusoe* and *Gil Blas*. He read *The Arabian Nights* and Elizabeth Inchbald's *Collected Farces* over and over. At age seven, he saw Joseph Grimaldi—the father of modern clowning—perform at the Star Theatre in Rochester, Kent. He later imitated Grimaldi's clowning and edited the *Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi*. He had a strong memory for people and events from his childhood, which he used in his writing. His father's brief job at the Navy Pay Office allowed Charles 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 ended in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House, and the family (except Charles, who stayed to finish his school term) moved to Camden Town, London. The family had left Kent with growing debts. Living beyond his means, John Dickens was forced by creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London, in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was common. Charles, then 12, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long known" to the family.