Charles Dickens 1812-1870
- Charles Dickens is probably England's most popular author. He was
born in Portsmouth, England on 7th February 1812, but he spent most of
his childhood in London and Kent where he based many of his novels.
- When he was 9 he went to school but had to leave when he was 12
because his dad had been careless with his money and was put in prison
for being in debt. While his dad was in prison Charles lived apart from
his family in a lodging house and worked in a shoe polish factory to
earn money to feed and clothe himself. This was the most miserable time
of Charles`s life and he feared he might never see his family again.
Luckily, later that year his dad was let out of prison because of an
inheritance and Charles was able to return home to live with his parents
and go back to school.
- When he was 15 he left school and went to work as a legal clerk in a
solicitor's office. There he learnt short-hand and was phenomenally fast
and because of this he got a job as a reporter, reporting dull court
cases and boring parliamentary debates.
- In 1836 he then decided to write his own stories under the name of
Boz. They were called the "Pickwick Papers" which were like
comics for adults. Charles would write the words and a man would draw
pictures for them. They were published in cheap monthly instalments. For
the first one they published only 400 copies but by the 4th they had to
print 40,000! The main character Mr Pickwick served time in a debtors
prison like Charle's Father. Within four months of publishing his first
story Charles was internationally famous.
- With the money he earned he was able to get married to a lady called
Catherine Hogarth. He became editor of a monthly magazine called
Bentley's Miscellany which he made instantly successful by his
serialisation of Oliver Twist, which is probably his most famous novel.
Oliver was born in a Workhouse, and Dickens used this novel to show how
bad these places were and how they were often run by corrupt and cruel
people.
Workhouses
- Workhouses had existed since at least 1776. They were places where
poor homeless people worked and in return they were fed and housed. In
1834 The Poor Law Amendment Act was introduced which wanted to make the
workhouses more of a deterrent to idleness as it was believed that
people were poor because they were idle and needed to be punished. So
people in workhouses were deliberately treated harshly and the
workhouses were more like prisons. Dickens and other important people
that thought like him gradually got conditions in the workhouses
improved. Workhouses existed until the early 1900s.
Today homeless people live on the streets in cardboard boxes
and I wonder what Dickens would have said about that?
- In 1842 Dickens went to America and lectured in favour of
international copyright, which meant that authors would get paid when
their books were published in another country . He also campaigned for
the abolition of slavery, (slavery had been banned in British Colonies
in 1834). He returned home and continued his writing, he published many
more novels in instalments:
Oliver Twist 1837-39
Nicholas Nickelby 1838-39
Old Curiosity Shop 1840-41
Barnaby Rudge 1841
Martin Chuzzlewit 1843-44
A Christmas Carol 1843
The Chimes 1845
The Cricket on the Hearth 1845
Dombey And Son 1846-48
David Copperfield 1849-50
Bleak House 1852-53
Hard Times 1854
Little Dorrit 1855-57
A Tale of Two Cities 1859
Great Expectations 1860-61
Our Mutual Friend 1864-65
Mystery of Edwin Drood (incomplete)1870
- Charles continued to use his books to tell about the bad conditions
that the working classes and poor people had to live under. He hoped
that by doing this that things would change for the good but they just
seemed to get worse.
- As well as writing he took an interest in the theatre and in 1847
became manager of a touring theatre company. The company must have been
good because they were asked to perform in front of Queen Victoria in
1851. There had been problems with his marriage and after an affair with
a young actress Ellen Ternan he separated from his wife and 10 children
in 1858. That same year he began giving his extremely popular public
readings from his own works. The audiences would both laugh and cry.
- He died on 9th June 1870 of a fatal stroke. (The same date as my
birthday except 117 years before).
- Dickens is probably most remembered at Christmas time because of his
novel A Christmas Carol which tells the story of a selfish, miserly old
man called Scrooge who cares about no one. He is visted by three ghosts:
the first takes him back to his past to remind him that as a young man
he had been kind and happy; the second showed him life as it was now and
how mean he was being especially to his clerk; the third showed him what
the future would be like if he did not change. Scrooge felt guily and
frightened and because he was given a second chance he said he would
from that day change and he would celebrate Christmas properly. He
ordered a turkey for his clerk and raised his wages and did what he
could to help the poor, and became a good man.
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