Charles Dickens
Bio: Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, the second of
eight children. Dickens's childhood experiences were similar to those
depicted in David Copperfield. His father, who was a government clerk, was
imprisoned for debt and Dickens was briefly sent to work in a warehouse at
the age of twelve. He received little formal education, but became a
reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle. The Pickwick
Papers were published in 1836-7 and after a slow start became a publishing
phenomenon and Dickens's characters the centre of a popular cult. Part of
the secret of his success was the method of cheap serial publication which
Dickens used for all his novels. He began Oliver Twist in 1837, followed by
Nicholas Nickleby (1838) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41). Martin
Chuzzlewit (1843-4) did not repeat its predecessors' success but this was
quickly redressed by the huge popularity of the Christmas Books, of which
the first, A Christmas Carol, appeared in 1843. In 1850 Dickens started the
weekly periodical Household Words, succeeded in 1859 by All the Year Round;
in these he published Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and
Great Expectations (1860-61). Dickens's health was failing during the 1860s
and the physical strain of the public readings which he began in 1858
hastened his decline, although Our Mutual Friend (1865) retained some of his
best comedy. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed
and he died on 9 June 1870. Public grief at his death was considerable and
he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
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