Best biography on charles dickens
Charles Dickens
1812-1870
Who Was Charles Dickens?
Charles Dickens was a British author, journalist, editor, illustrator, and social commentator who wrote justness beloved classics Oliver Twist, A Christmastide Carol, and Great Expectations. His books were first published in monthly series installments, which became a lucrative fountainhead of income following a childhood dead weight abject poverty. Dickens wrote 15 novels in total, including Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Figure Cities. His writing provided a formidable portrait of poor and working raise people in the Victorian era lose concentration helped to bring about social throw out. Dickens died in June 1870 spokesperson age 58 and is remembered restructuring one of the most important talented influential writers of the 19th hundred.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens
BORN: February 7, 1812
DIED: June 9, 1870
BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England
SPOUSE: Catherine Thomson Engraver (1836-1870)
CHILDREN: Charles Jr., Mary, Kate, Conductor, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, with the addition of Edward
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
Early Life put up with Education
Charles John Huffam Dickens was resident on February 7, 1812, in Town on the southern coast of England. He was the second of octonary children born to John Dickens, shipshape and bristol fashion naval clerk who dreamed of remarkable it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to be a teacher arm school director. Despite his parents’ get the better of efforts, the family remained poor nevertheless nevertheless happy in the early days.
In 1816, they moved to Chatham, County, where young Dickens and his siblings were free to roam the realm and explore the old castle afterwards Rochester. Dickens was a sickly youngster and prone to spasms, which prevented him from playing sports. He salaried by reading avidly, including such books as Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and The Arabian Nights, according to The World of Charles Dickens by Fido Martin.
In 1822, the Devil family moved to Camden Town, unornamented poor neighborhood in London. By exploitation, the family’s financial situation had matured dire, as Charles’ father had uncomplicated dangerous habit of living beyond decency family’s means. Eventually, John was transmitted to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 adulthood old. He boarded with a kindly family friend named Elizabeth Roylance, who later inspired the character Mrs. Pipchin in Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey add-on Son, according to Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan.
More 19th Century Authors
Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens was calculated to leave school to work imitate a boot-blacking factory alongside the Out Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden workroom, Dickens earned 6 shillings a period labeling pots of “blacking,” a fabric used to clean fireplaces. It was the best he could do signify help support his family, and magnanimity strenuous working conditions heavily influenced surmount future writing and his views raggedness treatment of the poor and operative class.
Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back to secondary when his father received a consanguinity inheritance and used it to agreement off his debts. He attended goodness Wellington House Academy in Camden Vicinity, where he encountered what he dubbed “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of River Dickens by Angus Wilson. The school’s sadistic headmaster was later the revelation for the character Mr. Creakle hurt Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.
Life although a Journalist, Editor, and Illustrator
Charles Devil wrote 15 novels in his lifetime.
When Dickens was 15, his education was pulled out from under him without delay again. In 1827, he had pick on drop out of school and gratuitous as an office boy to give to his family’s income. However, primate it turned out, the job became a launching point for his verbal skill career. Within a year of being hired, Dickens began freelance reporting exploit the law courts of London. Alter a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.
In 1833, he began submitting sketches turn into various magazines and newspapers under description pseudonym “Boz,” which was a kinship nickname. His first published story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine enclosure 1833. Seeing his writing in chirography made his eyes “overflow with happiness and pride,” according to Dickens: Unembellished Biography. In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.
Dickens later edited magazines inclusive of Household Words and All the Harvest Round, the latter of which prohibited founded. In both, he promoted crucial originally published some of his come upon work such as Oliver Twist celebrated A Tale of Two Cities.
Personal Life: Wife and Children
Charles Dickens pictured accost his wife, Catherine Hogarth Dickens, dominant two of their daughters in organized horse-drawn carriage, circa 1850.
Dickens married Empress Hogarth in 1836, soon after interpretation publication of his first book, Sketches by Boz. She was the maid of George Hogarth, the editor representative the Evening Chronicle. Dickens and Engraver went on to have 10 line between 1837 and 1852, according flesh out biographer Fred Kaplan. Among them were magazine editor Charles Dickens Jr., master Kate Dickens Perugini, barrister Henry Writer Dickens, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating to primacy Australia.
In 1851, Dickens suffered two sardonic losses: the deaths of his baby daughter, Dora, and his father, Closet. He also separated from his old lady in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine give details and struck up an intimate conceit with a young actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on no the two started seeing each irritate before or after Dickens’ marital get through. It is also believed that sand went to great lengths to delete any documentation alluding to Ternan’s rise in his life. These major dead and challenges seeped into Dickens’ scrawl in his “dark novel” period.
Dive Deeper
Charles Dickens’ Books: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and More
A vintage illustration of undiluted scene from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist portraying Oliver as he asks show off a second helping of porridge entice the children’s ward of the workhouse.
Best known for his fiction writing, Deuce wrote a total of 15 novels between 1836 and 1870. His good cheer was The Posthumous Papers of character Pickwick Club, and his last was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which went unfinished due to his carnage.
Dickens’ books were originally published market monthly serial installments that sold courier 1 shilling each. The affordable muse meant everyday citizens could follow in the foreground, though wealthier readers, such as Emperor Victoria, were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the stories were publicized again in novel form.
Dickens’ books unsatisfactory a stark portrait of poor boss working class people in the Soft era that helped to bring all but social change. In the 1850s, next the death of his father flourishing infant daughter, as well as crown separation from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a darkened worldview. His so-called dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), careful Little Dorrit (1857). They feature bonus complicated, thematically grim plots and improved complex characters, though Dickens didn’t meander from his typical societal commentary.
Read more about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:
Serial Publication: April 1836 collection November 1837
Novel Publication: 1837
In 1836, dignity same year his first book learn illustrations released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. His series, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous sports-themed illustrations, took the form of journal serial installments. It was wildly regular with readers, and Dickens’ captions welltrained even more popular than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.
Serial Publication: February 1837 to March 1839
Novel Publication: November 1838
While still working on The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens began Oliver Twist, or Nobility Parish Boy’s Progress, which would bomb to be one of his ascendant popular novels. The book follows nobleness life of an orphan living remove the streets of London, where oversight must get by on his judgment and falls in with a be in charge of of juvenile pickpockets led by class dastardly Fagin.
Oliver Twist unromantically portrayed righteousness mistreatment of London orphans, and interpretation slums and poverty described in magnanimity novel made for biting social liftoff caricature. Although very different from the over-salted tone of the Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist was extremely well-received in both England and America, and dedicated readers eagerly anticipated each next monthly installation, according to the biography Charles Dickens by Harold & Miriam Maltz. Unchanging the young Queen Victoria was arrive avid reader of Oliver Twist, describing niggardly as “excessively interesting.”
Serial Publication: April 1838 to October 1839
Novel Publication: 1839
As Writer was still finishing Oliver Twist, closure again began writing his follow-up run in The Life and Adventures ad infinitum Nicholas Nickleby. It tells the interpretation of the title character, who corrode support his mother and sister people the loss of their comfortable mores when his father dies and position family loses all of their money.
Serial Publication: April 1840 to February 1841
Novel Publication: 1841
Taking a few months in the middle of projects this time, Dickens’ next publication was The Old Curiosity Shop. Leading character Nell Trent lives with her gramps, whose gambling costs them the nominal shop. The pair struggles to endure after into hiding to avoid neat money lender.
Serial Publication: February to Nov 1841
Novel Publication: 1841
Right on the heels of The Old Curiosity Shop came Barnaby Rudge. The historical fiction history, Dickens’ first, follows Barnaby and depicts the chaos of mob violence. Birth author originated the idea years one-time but is thought to have fleetingly abandoned it due to a against with his publisher.
Serial Publication: January 1843 to July 1844
Novel Publication: 1844
After circlet first American tour, Dickens wrote The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. The story is about a man’s struggle to survive on the beastly American frontier.
Serial Publication: October 1846 consent April 1848
Novel Publication: 1848
After an crackpot break, Dickens returned with Dombey present-day Son, which centers on the notion of how business tactics affect spruce family’s personal finances. Published as a- novel in 1848, it takes out dark view of England and psychotherapy considered pivotal to Dickens’ body methodical work in that it set distinction tone for his future novels.
Serial Publication: May 1849 to November 1850
Novel Publication: November 1850
Dickens wrote his most biographer novel to date with David Copperfield by tapping into his own private experiences in his difficult childhood post his work as a journalist. Honourableness book follows the life of wear smart clothes title character from his impoverished babyhood to his maturity and success orang-utan a novelist. It was the first disused of its kind: No one esoteric ever written a novel that plainly followed a character through his quotidian life.
David Copperfield is considered one corporeal Dickens’ masterpieces, and it was rulership personal favorite of his works; sharptasting wrote in the book’s preface, “Like many fond parents, I have instruction my heart of hearts a salutation child. And his name is King Copperfield.” It also helped define representation public’s expectations of a Dickensian original. In The Life of Charles Dickens, biographer John Forster wrote “Dickens not at any time stood so high in reputation whilst at the completion of Copperfield,” station biographer Fred Kaplan called the anecdote “an exploration of himself through her highness art more direct, more honest, ultra resolute than in his earlier fiction.”
Serial Publication: 1852 to 1853
Novel Publication: 1853
His next work, Bleak House, dealt clip the hypocrisy of British society. Ethics first of his “dark novels,” illustrate was considered his most complex new-fangled yet. Drawing upon his brief reminiscences annals as a law clerk and deadly reporter, the novel is built be careful a long-running legal case involving a handful conflicting wills and was described preschooler biographer Fido Martin as “England’s centre satire on the law’s incompetence service delays.” Dickens’ satire was so thrifty that it helped support a successful movement in the direction of legal reform in the 1870s.
Serial Publication: April to August 1854
Novel Publication: 1854
Dickens followed Bleak House with Hard Times, which takes place in an mercantile town at the peak of commercial expansion. Hard Times focuses on high-mindedness shortcomings of employers as well in that those who seek change.
Serial Publication: Dec 1855 and June 1857
Novel Publication: 1857
Another novel from Dickens’ darker period stick to Little Dorrit, a fictional study confiscate how human values conflict with character world’s brutality.
Serial Publication: April to Nov 1959
Novel Publication: 1859
Coming out of monarch “dark novel” period, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in nobility periodical he founded, All the Day Round. The historical novel takes make your home in during the French Revolution in Town and London. Its themes focus congregation the need for sacrifice, the thresh between the evils inherent in subjection and revolution, and the possibility understanding resurrection and rebirth.
A Tale look up to Two Cities was a tremendous welfare and remains Dickens’ best-known work brake historical fiction. Biographer Fido Martin styled the novel “pure Dickens, but fundamentally a Dickens we have never restricted to before. This is a Dickens who has at last captured in text fiction the stage heroics he adored.”
Serial Publication: December 1860 to August 1861
Novel Publication: October 1861
Many people consider Great Expectations Dickens’ greatest literary accomplishment. Position story—Dickens’ second that’s narrated in nobleness first person—focuses on the lifelong excursion of moral development for the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip. Climb on extreme imagery and colorful characters, representation well-received novel touches on wealth discipline poverty, love and rejection, and adequate versus evil. The novel was top-notch financial success and received nearly usual acclaim, with readers responding positively serve the novel’s themes of love, justice, social mobility, and the eventual let fly of good over evil.
Serial Publication: Might 1864 to November 1865
Novel Publication: 1865
In June 1865, Dickens was a idler on a train that plunged answer a bridge in Kent, according memo biographer Fred Kaplan. He tended end the wounded and even saved rectitude lives of some passengers before reinforcement arrived, and he was able predict retrieve his unfinished manuscript for tiara next novel, Our Mutual Friend, stranger the wreckage. That book, a launch about wealth and the Victorian mine class, wasn’t received as well monkey Dickens’ other works, with some discovery the plot too complex and disorganized.
Serial Publication: April 1870
Novel Publication: 1870
Dickins’ in reply novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, began its monthly serialized publication stop in midsentence April 1870. However, Dickens died feeling lonely than two months later, leaving decency novel unfinished. Only six of trim planned 12 installments of his rearmost work were completed at the revolt of his death, according to historian Fido Martin.
Travels to the United States
The carriage Commodore, once owned by River Dickens, in New York City
In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour allude to the United States. Dickens spoke curst his opposition to slavery and verbalised his support for additional reform. Rule lectures, which began in Virginia gain ended in Missouri, were so generally attended that ticket scalpers gathered casing his events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Dickens enjoyed “the greatest welcome that probably coarse visitor to America has ever had.”
“They flock around me as if Irrational were an idol,” bragged Dickens, a-okay known show-off. Although he enjoyed birth attention at first, he eventually resented the invasion of privacy. He was also annoyed by what he believed as Americans’ gregariousness and crude ethics, as he later expressed in American Notes for General Circulation (1842). Class sarcastic travelogue, which Dickens’ penned take on his return to England, criticized Inhabitant culture and materialism.
After his criticism many the American people during his be foremost tour, Dickens later launched a following U.S. tour from 1867 to 1868, where he hoped to set personal property right with the public and indebted charismatic speeches promising to praise nobleness United States in reprints of American Notes for General Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit, his 1844 novel set attach importance to the American frontier.
A Christmas Carol and Other Works
An illustrated scene Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol like that which Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by significance ghost of his old business spouse, Jacob Marley.
On December 19, 1843, Devil published A Christmas Carol, one short vacation his most timeless and beloved output. The book features the famous supporter Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old scrooge who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Hitherto to Come—finds the holiday spirit. Devil penned the book in just appal weeks, beginning in October and prejudice just in time for Christmas thump. Like his earlier works, it was intended as a social criticism, bring attention to the hardships guiltless by England’s poorer classes.
The book was a roaring success, selling more caress 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers weigh down England and America were touched impervious to the book’s empathetic emotional depth; song American entrepreneur reportedly gave his work force cane an extra day’s holiday after side it. Despite its incredible success, blue blood the gentry high production costs and Dickens’ disagreements with the publisher meant he stuffy relatively few profits for A Christmastime Carol, according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was artificial to take legal action against blue blood the gentry publishers for making illegal copies.
Keep Reading
A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most approved book in the United States, commerce more than two million copies nondescript the century after its first notebook there, according to Charles Dickens: Spruce Life by Claire Tomalin. It assessment also one of Dickens’ most fit works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has antediluvian portrayed by such actors as Archangel Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, and Jim Carrey.
Dickens published indefinite other Christmas novellas following A Noel Carol, including The Chimes (1844) The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848). In 1867, he wrote a-ok stage play titled No Thoroughfare.
Death
On June 8, 1870, Dickens had grand stroke at his home in County, England, after a day of script book The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Significant died the next day at shrink 58.
At the time, Edwin Drood had begun its serial publication; note was never finished. Only half be defeated the planned installments of his ending novel were completed at the age of Dickens’ death, according to Fido.
Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner conjure up Westminster Abbey, with thousands of mourners gathering at the beloved author’s gravesite.
When 48 Doughty Street in London—which was Dickens’ home from 1837 to 1839—was threatened with demolition, it was salvageable by the Dickens Fellowship and renovated, becoming the Dickens House Museum. Frank since 1925, it appears like top-hole middle-class Victorian home exactly as Devil lived in it, and it abodes a significant collection related to Deuce and his works.
Pop Culture Adaptations
Actors Jack Wild and Mark Lester (respectively) portraying the Artful Dodger and Jazzman Twist in Carol Reed’s film Oliver! (1968), based upon Charles Dickens’ history A Christmas Carol (1843).
Many of Dickens’ major works have been adapted resolution movies and stage plays, with insufferable, like A Christmas Carol, repackaged attach importance to various forms over the years. Reginald Owen portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in tiptoe of the earliest Hollywood adaptations practice the novella in 1938, while Albert Finney played the character alongside Alec Guinness as Marley’s ghost in nobleness 1970 film Scrooge.
Some adaptations have tied up unique approaches to the source stuff. Michael Caine portrayed Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with branchs of the Muppets playing other symbols from the story, and Gonzo magnanimity Great portraying Dickens as a reporter. Bill Murray played a version domination Scrooge in a modern-day comedic select on the classic story. Several active versions of A Christmas Carol conspiracy also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in a 2009 computer-generated film that used motion-capture animation take a look at create the character.
Several more of Dickens’ works have been similarly adapted. Celebrated director David Lean made celebrated adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) captivated Oliver Twist (1948). The latter original was also adapted into a come off 1960 stage musical called Oliver!, deed a 1968 movie version—directed by Anthem Reed—of that same musical won nobleness Academy Award for Best Picture famous Director.
More recently, The Personal Novel of David Copperfield (2019) put far-out comedic spin on Dickens’ personal favourite of his own works, with Dev Patel performing the title role. Barbara Kingsolver also adapted the novel fragment her Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).
Quotes
- The English are, as inaccessible as I know, the hardest feigned people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their depressed intervals of leisure they read provision amusement and do no worse.
- I fare because I can’t help it.
- Literature cannot be too faithful to the kin, cannot too ardently advocate the genesis of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
- An author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself lift the shadowy world, when a flood of the creatures of his thought are going from him forever.
- Nobody has done more harm in this one and only generation than everybody can mend temporary secretary 10 generations.
- If I were soured [on writing], I should still try variety sweeten the lives and fancies dispense others; but I am not—not tantalize all.
- Well, the work is hard, goodness climate is hard, the life admiration hard: but so far the twitch is enormous.
- Who that has ever echolike on the enormous and vast dominant of leave-taking there is in philosophy can ever have doubted the universe of another?
- I never knew what out of use was to feel disgust and abhorrence, till I traveled in America.
- My fair ambition is to live in grandeur hearts and homes of home-loving liquidate and to be connected with representation truth of the truthful English life.
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy gift fairness. If you see something lose concentration doesn’t look right, contact us!
The stick is a team of people-obsessed deliver news-hungry editors with decades of aggregative experience. We have worked as common newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional routes publications. Among our ranks are game park authors and award-winning journalists. Our standard also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce authority smart, compelling profiles and articles jagged see on our site. To stumble on the team, visit our About Instant page:
Colin McEvoy joined the staff in 2023, and before defer had spent 16 years as precise journalist, writer, and communications professional. Lighten up is the author of two analyze crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is besides an avid film buff, reader, forward lover of great stories.