Charles Dickens : Biography
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| Charles Dickens
British
novelist Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England.
Over the course of his writing career, he wrote the beloved classic novels
Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale
of Two Cities and Great Expectations. On June 9, 1870, Dickens died of a stroke
in Kent, England, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
unfinished.
Famed British author
Charles Dickens was born Charles John Huffam Dickens on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth,
on the southern coast of England. He was the second of eight children. His
father, John Dickens, was a naval clerk who dreamed of striking it rich.
Charles Dickens’ mother, Elizabeth Barrow, aspired to be a teacher and school
director. Despite his parents’ best efforts, the family remained poor.
Nevertheless, they were happy in the early days. In 1816, they moved to
Chatham, Kent, where young Charles and his siblings were free to roam the
countryside and explore the old castle at Rochester.
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 John Dickens 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.
Following his
father’s imprisonment, Charles Dickens was forced to leave school to work at a
boot-blacking factory alongside the River Thames. At the rundown, rodent-ridden
factory, Dickens earned six 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. Looking back on the experience, Dickens saw it as the moment he
said goodbye to his youthful innocence, stating that he wondered “how [he]
could be so easily cast away at such a young age.” He felt abandoned and
betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him. These sentiments
would later become a recurring theme in his writing.
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. But 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. As it
turned out, the job became an early launching point for his writingcareer.
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.” In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches
by Boz. Dickens’
first success caught the eye of Catherine Hogarth, whom he soon married.
Catherine would grace Charles with a brood of 10 children before the couple
separated in 1858.
Early Writing
In the same year that Sketches
by Boz was
released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the
Pickwick Club.
His series of
sketches, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous
sports-themed illustrations, took the form of monthly serial installments.The
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was
wildly popular with readers. In fact, Dickens’ sketches were even more popular
than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.
Around this time, Dickens
had also become publisher of a magazine calledBentley’s Miscellany. In
it he started publishing his first
novel,Oliver Twist, which follows the life of an
orphan living in the streets. The story was inspired by how Dickens felt as an
impoverished child forced to get by on his wits and earn his own keep. Dickens continuedshowcasing Oliver
Twist in
the magazines he later edited, includingHousehold Words and All
the Year Round, the latter of which he founded. The novel was extremely
well received in both England and America. Dedicated readers of Oliver
Twist eagerly
anticipated the next monthly installment.
Over the next few
years, Dickens struggled to match the level ofOliver Twist’s success.
From 1838 to 1841, he published The Life and Adventures of
Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop andBarnaby
Rudge.
In 1842, Dickens and
his wife, Kate, embarked on a five-month lecture tour of the United States,
leaving their 10 children at home with friends. Upon their return, Dickens
penned American
Notes for General Circulation, a sarcastic travelogue criticizing American
culture and materialism.
In 1843, Dickens
wrote his novel The
Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, a story about a man’s struggle to
survive on the ruthless American frontier. The book was published the following
year.
Over the next couple
of years, Dickens published two Christmas stories. One was the classic A
Christmas Carol, which features the timeless protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge,
a curmudgeonly old miser, who, with the help of a ghost, finds the Christmas
spirit.
Fame
During his first U.S.
tour, in 1842, Dickens designated himself as what many have deemed the first
modern celebrity. He 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 started gathering
outside his events. Biographer J.B. Priestly wrote that during the tour,
Dickens “had 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.
In light of his
criticism of the American people during his first tour, Dickens launched a
second U.S. tour, from 1867 to 1868, hoping to set things right with the
public.
On his second tour,
he made a charismatic speech promising to praise the United States in reprints
of American
Notes for General Circulation and The Life and Adventures of Martin
Chuzzlewit.
His 76 readings earned him no less than $95,000,
which, in the Victoria era, amounted to approximately $1.5 million in current
U.S. dollars.
Back at home, Dickens had
become so famous that people recognized him all over London as he strolled around the city
collecting the observations that would serve as inspiration for his future
work.
In 1845, after
Dickens had toured the United States once, he spent a year in Italy writing Pictures
from Italy. Over the next two years he published, in installments, his
first major novel, Dealings
with the Firm of Dombey and Son. The novel’s main theme is how business
tactics affect a family’s personal finances. It takes a dark view of England
and was pivotal to Dickens’ body of work in that it set the tone for his other
novels.
From 1849 to 1850,
Dickens worked on David
Copperfield, the first work of its kind; no one had ever written a novel
that simply followed a character through his everyday life. In writing it,
Dickens tapped into his own personal experiences, from his difficult childhood
to his work as a journalist. Although David Copperfield is
not considered Dickens’ best work, it was his personal favorite. It also helped
define the public’s expectations of a Dickensian novel.
During the 1850s,
Dickens suffered two devastating losses: the deaths of his daughter and father.
He also separated from his wife during that decade. Consequently, his novels
began to express his darkened worldview. In Bleak House, published in
installments from 1852 to 1853, he deals with the hypocrisy of British society.
It was considered his most complex novel to date. Hard
Times (published
in 1854) takes place in an industrial town at the peak of economic expansion.
In it, Dickens focuses on the shortcomings of employers as well as those who
seek change. Also among Dickens’ darker novels is Little
Dorrit, a fictional study of how human values come in conflict with the
world’s brutality.
Coming out of his
“dark novel” period, in 1859 Dickens published A
Tale of Two Cities, a historical novel that takes place during the French
Revolution. He published it in a periodical he founded, All
the Year Round. His next novel, Great Expectations (1860-1861),
focuses on the protagonist’s lifelong journey of moral development. It is
widely considered his greatest literary accomplishment. A few years later,
Dickens produced Our
Mutual Friend, a novel that analyzes the psychological impact of wealth on
London society.
Death
In 1865, Dickens was
in a train accident and never fully recovered. Despite his fragile condition,
he continued to
tour until 1870. On June 9, 1870, Dickens had a stroke and, at age 58, died at
Gad’s Hill Place, his country home in Kent, England. He was buried in Poet’s
Corner at Westminster Abbey, with thousands of mourners gathering at the
beloved author’s gravesite. Scottish satirical writerThomas
Carlyle described
Dickens’ passing as “an event worldwide, a unique of talents suddenly extinct.”
At the time of Dickens’ death, his final novel, The
Mystery of Edwin Drood, was left unfinished.
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