Charles Dickens Biography
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Charles
Dickens
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The
English author Charles John Huffam Dickens is the most widely read Victorian
novelist. He is most appreciated for his ‘dark’ novels than for his humorous
works. His works have enriched the English language and also the world of literature.
His novels have a variety of wonderful characters. Mr. Bumble and Wackford
Squeers are two such characters.
Charles
Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 at Portsea on the southern coast of
England. He belonged to a lower-middle-class family. He depicted his family in
his novel David Copperfield. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay
office.
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Charles
Dickens
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When
Charles was 12, he was sent to work in a warehouse that handled ‘blacking’ or
shoe polish. There he mingled with working class people. For many months, he
had to live apart from his family when they moved in with his father. His
father had been imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison. This insecurity
of Dickens’ permanently shaped his view of life and his writing.
After
a few months, his father relieved from debt and he (Charles) returned to
school. When he was 15, he was forced to become an office boy. In the following
year, he started working as a freelance reporter cum stenographer at the law
courts of London. By 1832, he got the job of a reporter for two London based newspapers.
In 1833, Charles began to contribute a series of impressions and sketches to
other newspapers and magazines, signing some of them ‘Boz’. These events
established his reputation and his first book ‘Sketches of Boz’ was
published in 1836. He got married with Catherine Hogarth in the same year.
Dickens’
career as a fiction writer began in 1833 with short stories and essays. In
1837, his comic novel The Pickwick Papers made him the most popular
author of his time in England. The Pickwick Papers is considered one of
the funniest novels in English literature. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby
and subsequent novels in the 1840s, shows his concern with vulgarity and evil.
His purest form of semi-autobiography ‘David Copperfield’ was published
in 1850. Except Shakespeare there is no other English writer who has created so
many memorable characters as Dickens.
Charles
Dickens is considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. His
novels portray the life of the different classes of society in the
mid-Victorian era, particularly the life of the poor and the underprivileged.
His childhood was full of hardships and that is why he could so realistically
portray the miseries and travails (unpleasant experiences) of the poor and
working class.
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Charles
Dickens
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Dickens
died on June 9, 1870 at Higham in England.
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