Charles Dickens: A Snapshot

Taken out of school, the boy was offered work in a factory to ease the situation. He was only twelve years old and the experience was to deeply effect his sensitivities especially when, by 1824, the family situation worsened still further, when John - Charles's father - was arrested for debting.

Charles was to say later that these early setbacks were to shame and haunt him throughout the remainder of his days and many of his novels, articles and stories - Oliver Twist, A Tale Of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations especially - feature prisons, workhouses and a life of hardship as central backdrops and, therefore, can be said to go some way to exorcising the ghosts of the author.

When John was released, Charles had turned fifteen and took employment in a solicitor's office. This was to make him a skilled shorthand secretary and, eventually, he became a political reporter for the staunchly anti-Tory Morning Chronicle newspaper. It was at this time that his series of Sketches, under the pseudonym of Boz, began to appear and saw his reputation as a writer steadily increase.

Dickens wrote instalments on a monthly basis and the unprecedented success of The Posthumous Papers Of The Pickwick Club sealed his fate as a writer and social commentator.

In 1836 Charles married Catherine Hogarth and the couple had thirteen children before separating.

Dickens wrote fifteen novels that were made available in affordable serial publications and, between 1837 and 1841, he produced four of his greatest pieces - Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop, all of which further cemented his reputation. He became held in high esteem by the nobility, including Queen Victoria (despite his difficulties in portraying women) and embarked on a tour of America in 1841 with high hopes: hopes that were soon dimmed by experience, as recorded in American Notes.

The pressure of work was to take its toll on his health and on his personal life; despite the successes of A Christmas Carol (1843) Dombey And Son (1844) David Copperfield (1849) and Bleak House (1851), in 1853 his marriage to Catherine collapsed.

Away from writing, Dickens devoted his ever-decreasing energies to many charitable and philanthropic exercises, such as the preservation of Shakespeare's birthplace and the establishment of a scheme to help poor, but talented, authors.

In 1860 he moved, alone, to Gad's Hill Place in Kent and in 1863, Our Mutual Friend began being serialised. In 1866, Dickens undertook and arduous tour of the USA out of a need to provide for his family and then, in 1868, he began The Mystery Of Edwin Drood and undertook a national tour of Britain in which he undertook the now famous Penny Readings and brought his talent to the general public on a vast scale.

During this tour, Liverpool's Saint George's Hall, he noted in his diary, was "without doubt the finest of places in which to read" and Liverpool and its poor were to move him deeply. It was also during this tour that his health began to seriously suffer.
On June 9th 1870, Charles John Huffam Dickens, passed away at his home in Gad's Hill, Kent, having suffered a paralysing stroke. Despite insisting on a quiet "unostentatious" funeral, the nation demanded more and, following a procession through the streets of London, his body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.

Charles Dickens is, alongside William Shakespeare, quite probably England's greatest ever writer, social commentator and essayist. His works reached hundreds of thousands of people who would, otherwise, have been incapable of reading his work for themselves and, so, enhanced the lives of many in incomprehensible destitution, immeasurably.

The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, his last novel, was to remain unfinished and is, despite this, nonetheless considered "a classic".

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