Charles Dickens Biography and latest books by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era responsible for some of English literature\'s most iconic characters. Many of his novels, with their recurrent concern for social reform, first appeared in magazines in serialised form. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next installment. His work has been praised for its realism, mastery of prose, comic genius and unique personalities.
 

Charles Dickens was born in 1812. Having spent the first three years of his life in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the family moved to London in 1815. His early years seem to have been idyllic, although he thought himself as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". This period came to an end when John Dickens, his father spent beyond his means and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor\'s prison in Southwark, London. Shortly, the rest of his family joined him – except Charles, who boarded with family friend Elizabeth Roylance.

To help his family, Dickens began working ten-hour a day. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on shoe polish. The strenuous – and often cruel – work conditions made a deep impression on Dickens, and later influenced his fiction, forming foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions.

After only a few months John Dickens\' paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him the sum of £450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was granted release from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea.

Although Dickens eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in London, his mother Elizabeth Dickens did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory. \'The incident must have done much to confirm Dickens\'s determined view that a father should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere inside the home. His mother\'s failure to request his return was no doubt a factor in his demanding and dissatisfied attitude towards women.\'

In 1856, his income from his writing allowed him to buy Gad\'s Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it.

Journalism and early novels

In 1833, Dickens\' first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk was published in the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. The following year he rented rooms at Furnival\'s Inn becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz, published in 1836. This led to the serialisation of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout his literary career.

In 1836, Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentley\'s Miscellany, a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. At the same time, his success as a novelist continued, producing Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations and, finally, Barnaby Rudge—all published in monthly instalments before being made into books.

On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thomson Hogarth, the daughter of editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury. They had ten children.

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered a stroke at his home. The next day, on 9 June, he died at Gad\'s Hill Place never having regained consciousness. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England\'s most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England\'s greatest writers is lost to the world."

Literary style

Dickens loved the style of 18th century Gothic romance, although it had already become a target for parody. His writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens\' acclaimed flights of fancy. Many of his characters\' names provide the reader with a hint as to the roles played in advancing the storyline, such as Murdstone in the novel David Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of "murder" and stony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism.

Characters

His novels were praised for their ability to capture the everyday man and thus create characters to whom readers could relate. Beginning with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, Dickens wrote numerous novels, each uniquely filled with believable personalities and vivid physical descriptions. Dickens\'s friend and biographer, John Forster, said that Dickens made "characters real existences, not by describing them but by letting them describe themselves."

Dickensian characters—especially their typically whimsical names—are among the most memorable in English literature. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist, The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, Charles Darnay, David Copperfield, Mr. Micawber, Abel Magwitch, Daniel Quilp, Samuel Pickwick, Wackford Squeers, Uriah Heep and many others are so well known and can be believed to be living a life outside the novels that their stories have been continued by other authors.

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