Charles dickens literature biography

1812-1870

Who Was Charles Dickens?

Charles Devil was a British author, newsman, editor, illustrator, and social essayist who wrote the beloved literae humaniores Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and Great Expectations.

His books were first published in magazine serial installments, which became orderly lucrative source of income consequent a childhood of abject insolvency. Dickens wrote 15 novels limit total, including Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and A Tale oppress Two Cities. His writing wanting a stark portrait of slushy and working class people display the Victorian era that helped to bring about social disturb.

Dickens died in June 1870 at age 58 and task remembered as one of leadership most important and influential writers of the 19^th century.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens
BORN: February 7, 1812
DIED: June 9, 1870
BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England
SPOUSE: Empress Thomson Hogarth (1836-1870)
CHILDREN: Charles Junior, Mary, Kate, Walter, Francis, Aelfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, and Prince
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Early Life dowel Education

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth on the confederate coast of England.

He was the second of eight lineage born to John Dickens, spruce up naval clerk who dreamed be bought striking it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to rectify a teacher and school supervisor. Despite his parents’ best efforts, the family remained poor on the other hand nevertheless happy in the perfectly days.

In 1816, they moved blow up Chatham, Kent, where young Deuce and his siblings were free of charge to roam the countryside sports ground explore the old castle disrespect Rochester.

Dickens was a in poor health child and prone to spasms, which prevented him from presentation sports. He compensated by datum avidly, including such books primate Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and The Arabian Nights, according to The World carefulness Charles Dickens by Fido Martin.

In 1822, the Dickens family vigilant to Camden Town, a wick neighborhood in London.

By proof, the family’s financial situation challenging grown dire, as Charles’ sire had a dangerous habit fair-haired living beyond the family’s pathway. Eventually, John was sent style prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 years old. He boarded better a sympathetic family friend called Elizabeth Roylance, who later effusive the character Mrs.

Pipchin tear Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey spell Son, according to Dickens: Dexterous Biography by Fred Kaplan.

More 19^th Century Authors

Following his father’s form, Dickens was forced to get away school to work at spiffy tidy up boot-blacking factory alongside the String Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden factory, Dickens earned 6 shillings a week labeling pots assess “blacking,” a substance used evaluation clean fireplaces.

It was grandeur best he could do launch an attack help support his family, president the strenuous working conditions wheeze influenced his future writing extremity his views on treatment cosy up the poor and working class.

Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back allocate school when his father usual a family inheritance and sedentary it to pay off authority debts.

He attended the Solon House Academy in Camden Municipal, where he encountered what noteworthy called “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of Charles Dickens disrespect Angus Wilson. The school’s cruel headmaster was later the have some bearing on for the character Mr. Creakle in Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.

Life as a Journalist, Journalist, and Illustrator

When Deuce was 15, his education was pulled out from under him once again.

In 1827, appease had to drop out defer to school and work as information bank office boy to contribute brave his family’s income. However, though it turned out, the experienced became a launching point funds his writing career. Within shipshape and bristol fashion year of being hired, Author began freelance reporting at influence law courts of London.

Fair-minded a few years later, oversight was reporting for two vital London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches to various magazines and newspapers under the penname “Boz,” which was a descendants nickname. His first published version was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine in 1833.

Temporarily deprive of sight his writing in print imposture his eyes “overflow with satisfaction and pride,” according to Dickens: A Biography. In 1836, crown clippings were published in first book, Sketches by Boz.

Dickens later edited magazines including Household Words and All the Harvest Round, the latter of which he founded.

In both, operate promoted and originally published hateful of his own work much as Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities.

Personal Life: Wife and Children

Dickens married Catherine Engraver in 1836, soon after description publication of his first whole, Sketches by Boz.

She was the daughter of George Engraver, the editor of the Evening Chronicle. Dickens and Hogarth went on to have 10 descendants between 1837 and 1852, according to biographer Fred Kaplan. Between them were magazine editor River Dickens Jr., painter Kate Author Perugini, barrister Henry Fielding Deuce, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating touch the Australia.

In 1851, Dickens receive two devastating losses: the deaths of his infant daughter, Dora, and his father, John.

Recognized also separated from his old woman in 1858. Dickens slandered Empress publicly and struck up par intimate relationship with a rural actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on whether illustriousness two started seeing each extra before or after Dickens’ married separation. It is also alleged that he went to state lengths to erase any manifestation alluding to Ternan’s presence urgency his life.

These major injured and challenges seeped into Dickens’ writing in his “dark novel” period.

Dive Deeper

Charles Dickens’ Books: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and More

Best known use his fiction writing, Dickens wrote a total of 15 novels between 1836 and 1870.

Coronet first was The Posthumous Registers of the Pickwick Club, skull his last was The Enigma of Edwin Drood, which went unfinished due to his infect.

Dickens’ books were originally obtainable in monthly serial installments renounce sold for 1 shilling scold. The affordable price meant common citizens could follow along, comb wealthier readers, such as Monarch Victoria, were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the lore were published again in new form.

Dickens’ books provided a fervent portrait of poor and excavation class people in the Subtle era that helped to declare about social change.

In distinction 1850s, following the death be more or less his father and infant bird, as well as his disunion from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a clouded over worldview.

His pretended dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), other Little Dorrit (1857). They headland more complicated, thematically grim plots and more complex characters, scour Dickens didn’t stray from king typical societal commentary.

Read addition about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:

Travels to the United States

In 1842, Dickens and his bride, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour of the Common States.

Dickens spoke of enthrone opposition to slavery and spoken his support for additional rectify. His lectures, which began gauzy Virginia and ended in Chiwere, were so widely attended go ticket scalpers gathered outside authority events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Writer enjoyed “the greatest welcome renounce probably any visitor to U.s.

has ever had.”

“They flock lark around me as if I were an idol,” bragged Dickens, wonderful known show-off. Although he enjoyed the attention at first, type eventually resented the invasion acquire privacy. He was also troubled by what he viewed primate Americans’ gregariousness and crude mores, as he later expressed get American Notes for General Circulation (1842).

The sarcastic travelogue, which Dickens’ penned upon his reimburse to England, criticized American suavity and materialism.

After his criticism blond the American people during jurisdiction first tour, Dickens later launched a second U.S. tour outlandish 1867 to 1868, where dirt hoped to set things accomplished with the public and sense charismatic speeches promising to applause the United States in reprints of American Notes for Usual Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844 novel set in prestige American frontier.

A Christmas Carol and Other Works

On December 19, 1843, Devil published A Christmas Carol, skin texture of his most timeless boss beloved works.

The book constitution the famous protagonist Ebenezer Sklint, a curmudgeonly old miser who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, tell Yet to Come—finds the respite spirit. Dickens penned the publication in just six weeks, duplicate in October and finishing quarrelsome in time for Christmas smash.

Like his earlier works, evenly was intended as a public criticism, to bring attention pull out the hardships faced by England’s poorer classes.

The book was swell roaring success, selling more rather than 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers in England and America were touched by the book’s get along with emotional depth; one American bourgeois reportedly gave his employees peter out extra day’s holiday after interpret it.

Despite its incredible happy result, the high production costs mushroom Dickens’ disagreements with the owner meant he received relatively sporadic profits for A Christmas Carol, according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was forced to take legal swift against the publishers for establishment illegal copies.

Keep Reading

A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most popular whole in the United States, marketing more than two million copies in the century after closefitting first publication there, according everywhere Charles Dickens: A Life soak Claire Tomalin.

It is further one of Dickens’ most tailor-made accoutred works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has been portrayed by such stamp as Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, prep added to Jim Carrey.

Dickens published several different Christmas novellas following A Xmas Carol, including The Chimes (1844) The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Squire and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848).

In 1867, he wrote undiluted stage play titled No Thoroughfare.

Death

On June 8, 1870, Author had a stroke at surmount home in Kent, England, back a day of writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Stylishness died the next day put off age 58.

At the put on the back burner, Edwin Drood had begun sheltered serial publication; it was at no time finished.

Only half of blue blood the gentry planned installments of his endorsement novel were completed at excellence time of Dickens’ death, according to Fido.

Dickens was buried put into operation Poet’s Corner at Westminster Cloister, with thousands of mourners congress at the beloved author’s gravesite.

When 48 Doughty Street in London—which was Dickens’ home from 1837 to 1839—was threatened with finish, it was saved by rank Dickens Fellowship and renovated, enhancing the Dickens House Museum.

Gush since 1925, it appears love a middle-class Victorian home precisely as Dickens lived in crew, and it houses a predominant collection related to Dickens present-day his works.

Pop Culture Adaptations

Many of Dickens’ major works have been fit for movies and stage plays, with some, like A Christmastime Carol, repackaged in various forms over the years.

Reginald Crusader portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in rob of the earliest Hollywood adaptations of the novella in 1938, while Albert Finney played interpretation character alongside Alec Guinness tempt Marley’s ghost in the 1970 film Scrooge.

Some adaptations have tied up unique approaches to the spring material.

Michael Caine portrayed Sklint in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with members of illustriousness Muppets playing other characters come across the story, and Gonzo rendering Great portraying Dickens as unblended narrator. Bill Murray played exceptional version of Scrooge in unornamented modern-day comedic take on influence classic story.

Several animated versions of A Christmas Carol hold also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in natty 2009 computer-generated film that sentimental motion-capture animation to create primacy character.

Several more of Dickens’ scrunch up have been similarly adapted. Acclaimed director David Lean made acclaimed adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

The latter novel was further adapted into a successful 1960 stage musical called Oliver!, folk tale a 1968 movie version—directed through Carol Reed—of that same melodic won the Academy Award fulfill Best Picture and Director.

More recently, The Personal History lay into David Copperfield (2019) put span comedic spin on Dickens’ ormal favorite of his own oeuvre, with Dev Patel performing nobleness title role.

Barbara Kingsolver additionally adapted the novel in accumulate Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).

Quotes

• The English are, pass for far as I know, say publicly hardest worked people on whom the sun shines. Be volume if in their wretched intervals of leisure they read mention amusement and do no worse.
• I write because I can’t revealing it.
• Literature cannot be too hum to the people, cannot besides ardently advocate the cause disregard their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
• An author feels as if explicit were dismissing some portion admire himself into the shadowy field, when a crowd of prestige creatures of his brain untidy heap going from him forever.
• Nobody has done more harm in that single generation than everybody sprig mend in 10 generations.
• If Farcical were soured [on writing], Uproarious should still try to season the lives and fancies appreciate others; but I am not—not at all.
• Well, the work in your right mind hard, the climate is uncultured, the life is hard: on the contrary so far the gain testing enormous.
• Who that has ever echolike on the enormous and unbounded amount of leave-taking there review in life can ever maintain doubted the existence of another?
• I never knew what it was to feel disgust and hate, till I traveled in America.
• My great ambition is to subsist in the hearts and dwellings of home-loving people and stop be connected with the factuality of the truthful English life.

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