 Born 1812 – Died 1870 (at the age of 58).  Born in Portsmouth, England February 7, 1812 to John (a clerk in an office) and Elizabeth Dickens. Soon after, the family moved to London.  They were an “average” lower to middle class family.  Unlike many children of the times, Charles Dickens had some formal schooling.

 Charles’s father loses his job and most of his income.  1824 – Charles’s father is arrested for debt and is imprisoned (supposedly along with Charles’s mother and 5 of the siblings).  At the age of 12, Charles is separated from his family and forced to go to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory to help pay off family’s debt. (A blacking warehouse was an establishment manufacturing, packaging, and distributing “blacking”, which was used for cleaning boots and shoes.  The experience of working in the Blacking Factory haunted Dickens for the rest of his life, and he spoke of it only to his wife and closest friend, but the topic emerged in his writings.

 Charles’s father was released from Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison (supposedly after 1-1½ years), but Charles was further psychologically scarred by the blacking factory experience because his mother insisted he continue to work there to help the family a bit longer.  Charles’ father rescued him from this fate however, and Charles Dickens was able to return to school where he remained until the age of 15.  At 15, he found employment as an office boy/law clerk at an attorney’s office, but this experience led him to conclude that he did not desire to go into law.  He soon began working as a free-lance newspaper reporter.

 During the time that Dickens was a free-lance writer (age 18),  he fell in love, but the relationship ended because her parents did not find him to be a “good enough match”.  At 23, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of his journalist friend.  Together, they had 10 children (7 boys and 3 girls).  There was a bit of scandal in the Dickens’ household. Catherine’s younger sister, Mary, moved in to help with the children, and it is said that Charles idolized her. She died very young, and this greatly distressed him and often surfaced in his writing as well.

 Dickens began to work as a free-lance newspaper reporter and writer.  His first published work is Sketches by Boz, which appeared in 1833 (Boz was the pseudonym that he wrote under).  Over time, Dickens wrote a wide array of works that made him one of the most prolific writers of all time.  Books to know (many written in serial/installment form): The Pickwick Papers (1836), Oliver Twist (1837), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849 – which was considered semi-autobiographical), Bleak House (1852), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860)… and more (14 novels written…plus one half finished at time of his death).

 Dickens’s writings often contained negative social commentaries about the times (particularly comments on social status), but they also contained a positive message. Dickens was concerned with the plight of the “common” man.  Dickens’s characters were often said to be like “people we know in the world.” Yet some critics has accused Dickens of engaging in writing caricatures (stock images) of people rather than solid, believable characters.  Keep in mind how many of Dickens’s characters are so memorable that they passed into common language …such as Ebenezer Scrooge.  Dickens desired to reflect truth about life and people (the good and the bad).

 After 22 years of marriage and much financial success, Charles separated from his wife Catherine due to marital difficulties and being “temperamentally unsuited” for each other. He begins seeing an actress.  It is said that Dickens was charming and brilliant, but had many emotional insecurities that most likely caused him to be extraordinarily difficult to live with.  It is stated that he emotionally (and financially) blackmailed his own children to favor him and ignore their mother in his final years by threatening to cut the children out of his will (some of the children obey – but others do not).

 In his books, Dickens continually spoke out about the conditions in Victorian England.  His books stressed the themes that he considered to be the two greatest problems of the times: ignorance and poverty.  He believed that education was the key to ending poverty.  In part due to his vigilance to these causes, there was an eventual change to the welfare system in England.

 Charles Dickens was well loved for not only his works, but for his public readings.  In his later years, he went on tour, vowing to do 100 last readings before he died. He completed 86 of them before his death in  Charles Dickens insisted on continuing to work and perform public reading even when his health deteriorated and the doctors warned against it. His work was his life. He was very popular with his fans.

 Dickens’s final public readings took place in London in He suffered from his 2 nd stroke (after a full day’s work) and died the next day. He died on June 9, 1870, at the peak of the Victorian Age.  He wished for a quiet burial, but that request went unheeded. Instead, he is buried at Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, a place reserved for only the most respected writers in England.  Summing up his career…Dickens wrote many books and was a celebrity of his time as well as quite wealthy for the times (but children, a separation, charitable contributions, etc. took away much of that wealth).

(which have also been adapted into movies)