Charles Dickens was one of Britain's most prolific and influential authors.
Born in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was exposed to literary works in the stories his nursemaid used to tell him. As a young boy, Charles witnessed his father John go to debtor's prison. Charles went to work at a blacking warehouse managed by a relative of his mother when he was twelve. His experiences with hard times and poverty went on to influence the themes of social justice and reform in his novels.
Although he had little formal schooling, Dickens was able to teach himself shorthand and launch a career as a journalist. At the age of sixteen, Dickens got himself a job as a court reporter, and later joined the staff of A Mirror of Parliament, a newspaper that reported on the decisions of Parliament.
Quickly becoming disillusioned with politics, Dickens developed an interest in social reform and began contributing to the True Sun, a radical newspaper. Although his main avenue of work would consist in writing novels, Dickens continued his journalistic work until the end of his life, editing The Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers as a political journalist gave him the opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at the beginning of his career. He went on to publish fifteen successful novels, including Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
Charles Dickens died on June 9, 1870. He is buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Charles Dickens' ghost story "The Signalman" is about an unnamed narrator who takes an interest in a railway signal operator who is haunted by a specter. The specter's ambiguous warnings lead to the signalman being run over by a train.
First...
This lesser-known Dickens novel was published under the longer and more formal title of Barnaby Rudge : A Tale of the Riots of Eighty, but over the years, this has been abridged to a less unwieldy Barnaby Rudge. It is an historical novel that is...
Bleak House was begun at Tavistock House, Dickens' London home, in November 1851, continued at Dover, and completed at Boulogne in August 1853. It was originally published in nineteen monthly parts, the last of which was double the size of the...
After celebrating the joy and charity of Christmas, A Christmas Carol is foremost a condemnation of 19th-century Victorian England's division between the rich and poor, the Haves and Have-Nots. London was a great world power, rich from industry...
When Charles Dickens sat down to write what would eventually become the novel David Copperfield, he first intended to write an autobiography, a recollection of his tumultuous, eventful life. Many of his memories, however, were too painful for him...
Dombey and Son was initially published as "Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation." The novel is typically seen as marking a transition in Dickens's career. His seventh novel, it is notable for showing...
"The name is Great Expectations. I think a good name?" Dickens to his editor before he started publishing the novel.
When Dickens started his thirteenth novel , Great Expectations, in 1860, he was already a national hero. He had come from humble...
Hard Times was originally published in serial form, in a magazine called Household Words beginning on April 1, 1854. The last time that Dickens had published a work in serial form was in 1841 and when publication of Hard Times had begun, Dickens...
Little Dorrit is a novel written by Charles Dickens published between 1855 and 1857. The book was published in serial form and was divided into nineteen parts, each sold separately. Each installment was illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and had...
Although The Old Curiosity Shop is one of Charles Dickens' least-known novels, it is certainly one of his most interesting. The Old Curiosity Shop follows Little Nell Trent, who lives with his grandfather in - as the title suggests - an old...
Oliver Twist was first published in 1837 in serial format, in Bentley’s Miscellany, which Dickens was editing at the time. Oliver Twist was Dickens’s second novel and his first real social novel, critiquing the harm public institutions inflicted...
Our Mutual Friend is the last novel Charles Dickens completed during his lifetime; The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left incomplete when the author died in 1870. The novel was published in 20 parts spread over 19 months (the final installment was a...
Dickens published his twelfth novel, A Tale of Two Cities, in his own literary journal called All the Year Round in weekly installments from April to November of 1859. He got the germ of the idea for the novel from a play by Wilkie Collins called...
