Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 at Portsmouth, where his father was a clerk in Navy Pay Office. But Dickens didn't live long in Portsmouth. When Charles Dickens was about four years of age his family moved to Chatham, and the five years he spent there were the happiest of all his boyhood. Dickens would return to Stratford and buy the big house, New Place, there, so little Charles Dickens dreamed that some day, perhaps, he might live in a big house that he loved, Gadshill Place, at Rochester. And one day the dreams of both of them came true but at the time there seemed little chance of it for Dickens. Charles was the oldest of a large family, eight in all, and his father, a happy-go-lucky, irresponsible man was always waiting for something to turn up. What schooling Charles Dickens had, he got at Chatham at a small day-school. His mother was a well-educated woman. She helped him at all. The one day in a room upstairs, Dickens found a pile books such as Robinson Crusoe, Roderick Random, Tom Jones. The Vicar of Wakefield - rather strong meat for a boy of nine, but Charles Dickens was delighted. The key to the treasure-house of English literature has been put in his hand and his own imagination was wakened. In 1821 the Dickens family moved to Camden Town in London. Dickens family lived into a small house there. Mr.Dickens the father of Charles Dickens was heavily in debt and didn't know which way to turn for money. The few possessions that they had were sold one by one, but things got no better, and finally Mr. Dickens was taken to the Marshalsea Prison, London, for debt. Charles Dickens knew it only too well from bitter experience, for when all the goods had been sold, Mrs.Dickens and the younger children went to the prison, too, to join the father. Meanwhile, Charles had got a job in an under-ground cellar at blacking factory at old Hungerford Stairs in the East End of London. This was the unhappy time of all his life. Dickens was lonely and hungry. Charles hated the coarse, rough boys with whom he had to work and who cared for none of the things that he loved. But his fortunes took a turn for the better. Charles Dickens was able to leave the blacking factory and he entered a lawyer's office in Lincoln's Inn. Charles Dickens learned shorthand and was taken on the staff of newspaper, the Mourning Chronicle, and his life-work of writing had really begun. Charles Dickens went all over the country getting news, writing up stories, meeting people and using his eyes. In 1833 Dickens had a number of papers published under the title Sketches by Boz, but it was in 1836 that he rose to fame as suddenly and as unmistaken as Scott had done. The circumstances were rather strange. A firm of publishers, Chapman Hall, had a number of pictures by a humorous artist, Seymour, and they wanted to get some short articles to illustrate them so that pictures and articles could appear together in a magazine in fortnightly parts. Someone suggested that the young newspaper reporter, Charles Dickens, might do the job. It was a job after own heart. Dickens accepted the offer, but asked for a rather freer hand in the writing than had been originally planned. Charles Dickens was allowed to have his way - and so Pickwick Papers came in to being. For the first fortnightly part of Pickwick Papers the published printed 400 copies, but such was its popularity that for Part Fifteen more than 40,000 copies had to be printed. At one stride Dickens had become the most popular living novelist and he held that position until his death. The rest can be told in a few words. It is a story of work, and work without rest. Charles poured out novel after novel - Oliver Twist , Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities - these are but a few of the more famous. At the same time Dickens was editing newspapers and magazines, visiting America, Italy, Switzerland, Paris giving readings from his books to huge crowds of people and writing constantly. It was the excitement of these readings. And the strain of Dickens continual work that brought about his sudden death in 1870. Charles Dickens had asked that his burial should be quite simple, but the whole nation wanted to give him the highest honor they could, and so he lies buried in Westminster Abbey, but as he wished it, with nothing on the stone except his name - Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was the great writer and great man. The man who knew London as few men have know it and who loved its common people humorously and understandingly. And that is why the common people have taken him to their heart.