Dickens, Charles John Huffam 1812-70
English writer

Dickens was born in Landport, then a suburb of Portsmouth. His father was John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay office at Portsmouth dockyard. In 1814 he was transferred to London, and in 1816 to Chatham where, already a great reader, he got some schooling. In 1821 the family fell into trouble; reforms in the Admiralty made his father's job redundant and they had to leave Chatham. They moved to London, where they took a small house in Camden Town, but John Dickens was arrested for debt in 1824 and sent to the Marshalsea prison with his whole family, apart from Charles, who was sent to work in a blacking factory at Hungerford Market. At night, Charles had four miles to walk to his lonely bedroom in lodgings in Camden Town; on Sundays he visited his parents in the prison.

On his father's release the family returned to Camden Town, and Charles was sent again to school, an academy in the Hampstead Road, for three or four years, after which he worked for a solicitor as an office boy (1827). Meanwhile his father had obtained a post as reporter for the Morning Herald, and Charles decided also to attempt the profession of journalist. He taught himself shorthand and visited the British Museum daily to supplement some of the shortcomings of his reading.

In 1828 he became a reporter of debates at the House of Commons for the Morning Chronicle, although at that time he was only interested in being an actor. It was not until 1835 that he obtained permanent employment on the staff of a London paper as a reporter, and in this capacity he was sent around the country. Meanwhile in December 1833, the Monthly Magazine published a sketch 'Dinner at Poplar Walk', under the pen-name 'Boz', which was the nickname of Charles's younger brother. Eventually he made an arrangement to contribute papers and sketches regularly to the Evening Chronicle, continuing to work as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and received an increased salary.

The Sketches by Boz were collected and published early in 1836. Dickens received �150 for the copyright; he later bought it back for 11 times that amount. In the last week of March 1836 the first number of the Pickwick Papers appeared; three days afterwards he married Catherine, the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. She bore him seven sons and three daughters between 1837 and 1852, three of whom predeceased their father. They were separated in 1858.

Once he'd become established, Dickens for the rest of his life allowed himself little respite. In fulfilment of publishers' engagements he produced Oliver Twist (1837-39) which appeared in Bentley's Miscellany; Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39); and Master Humphrey's Clock, a serial miscellany which resolved itself into the two stories The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). From then on a great part of Dickens's life was spent abroad, especially notable being his visits to the USA in 1842 and 1867-68, his stay in Genoa in 1844-45 and in Lausanne in 1846, and his summers spent in Boulogne in 1853, 1854 and 1856. His reception in the USA was somewhat chilled by his criticism of US publishers for pirating English books, and by the unfavourable picture of the country given in Martin Chuzzlewit.

Dickens died suddenly at Gadshill, near Rochester (the place he had coveted as a boy, and purchased in 1856), and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His last work was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a mystery story influenced by the work of his friend Wilkie Collins; it remained unfinished.

Dickens is the most widely known English writer after Shakespeare, and no other novelist has managed to find both popular success and critical respect on such a lavish scale. His novels are a vivid portrayal of social life in Victorian England, much of it derived from his own experiences. The breadth, perception and sympathy of his writing, his abiding concern with social deprivation and injustice, his ability to conjure up memorable characters in a few paragraphs, and the comic genius which permeates even his most serious works, have all ensured that he continues to find a receptive audience, both for the books themselves and in film and stage adaptations of his work.

Bibliography: Principal works: Sketches by Boz (1833-36); The Pickwick Papers (1836); Oliver Twist (1837-39); Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41); Barnaby Rudge (1841); American Notes (1842); Martin Chuzzlewit (1843); The Christmas Tales: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain (1843, 1846, 1848); Pictures from Italy (1845); Dombey and Son (1846-48); David Copperfield (1849-50); Bleak House (1852-53); A Child's History of England (1854); Hard Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1855-57); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); The Uncommercial Traveller (1861); Great Expectations (1860-61); Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870, unfinished). To these must be added public readings (1858-70), both in England and in the USA, private theatricals, speeches, innumerable letters, pamphlets, plays, and a popular magazine, first (1850) called Household Words and then (1859) All the Year Round.

Bibliography: Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (1990); J Carey, The Violent Effigy (1973); P Hobsbaum, A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens (1973); J Butt and K Tillotson, Dickens at Work (1957); G Orwell, 'Charles Dickens', Inside the Whale (1940), reprinted in Collected Essays (1968); J Forster, The Life of Dickens (1872-74).