Charles Dickens
At 12, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot-polish pots while his father sat in debtors' prison. He hid it for years, then turned it into fiction.
Published
Quick Facts
- Born
- 7 February 1812, Landport, Portsmouth
- Died
- 9 June 1870, Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent
- Famous for
- Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Bleak House
- Childhood low point
- Started work at Warren's Blacking Warehouse in February 1824, shortly before his father was sent to the Marshalsea
- Big break
- The Pickwick Papers, published in monthly parts from 1836
- Family
- Married Catherine Hogarth in 1836; they had ten children and separated in 1858
- Unfinished work
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left half-written at his death
- Resting place
- Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey
The boy in the blacking factory
The most famous Victorian novelist nearly had a very different life. In February 1824, when Dickens was 12, he started work at Warren's Blacking Warehouse by the Thames, tying up and labelling pots of boot polish for a few shillings a week. He had already left his Chatham school after the family's move to London in 1822. Shortly afterwards his father John was sent to the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark. It lasted only months, but he never forgot the shame. He kept it secret from almost everyone, even his wife, and only told his friend and future biographer John Forster years later. The wound shows everywhere in his books. Child labour, debt and prison gates run through Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. In Little Dorrit, the Marshalsea becomes a main setting.
The reporter who became a publishing phenomenon
Dickens taught himself shorthand and worked as a parliamentary reporter and journalist. His first sketches appeared in the mid-1830s, and then came The Pickwick Papers. It was issued in cheap monthly instalments, and readers loved it. That format became Dickens's trademark. He wrote against deadlines, left readers hanging at the end of each part and adjusted the story as he saw how people reacted. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and later novels followed the same pattern. He was a literary celebrity by his mid-twenties, and the public felt they knew him personally.
The book that helped reinvent Christmas
A Christmas Carol came out on 19 December 1843. Dickens wrote it quickly, partly because he needed money. The first printing of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. It did not invent Christmas, but it caught and shaped the mood: family gatherings, generosity, feasting and a conscience about the poor. Scrooge's change of heart is a social argument as much as a ghost story. "Bah! Humbug!" is still a stock phrase, and "Scrooge" is shorthand for a miser. He later performed it himself on stage, and the readings became hugely popular.
A campaigner with a pen
Dickens used fiction to push for change. Nicholas Nickleby attacked cheap Yorkshire boarding schools, with Dotheboys Hall as the grim example. Bleak House savaged the slow, ruinous Court of Chancery. Oliver Twist put the workhouse under a harsh light. He was also active outside his books. With the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts he set up Urania Cottage in 1847, a home in Shepherd's Bush to help women leave lives of crime and poverty. He edited the magazines Household Words and All the Year Round, which carried reporting and fiction side by side.
Night walks, ravens and a very tidy comb
Dickens was a restless walker. He tramped long distances around London, often at night, and said it helped him think and sleep. He was fussy about neatness, famously fond of grooming and meticulous about how his rooms were arranged. He also loved pets. His pet raven Grip appears as a character in Barnaby Rudge. After the bird died, it was stuffed, and it now belongs to the Free Library of Philadelphia. His private life was messier. He separated from Catherine in 1858 and was close to the actress Ellen Ternan. On 9 June 1865 he survived the Staplehurst railway crash in Kent, helping the injured. He died on 9 June 1870, five years to the day later, after a stroke at Gad's Hill.
Where you can still find him
Start in London at 48 Doughty Street, where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839 and wrote parts of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. It is now the Charles Dickens Museum. Then walk the lanes of Southwark, where the Marshalsea once stood and a remnant of its wall survives. In Portsmouth, his birthplace on Old Commercial Road is a museum. In Kent, Rochester and Chatham are full of Dickens corners, and the town celebrates him with festivals. Gad's Hill Place, the house he bought after dreaming about it as a boy, still stands in Higham. Broadstairs was a favourite seaside retreat, and the town still holds a Dickens festival each summer. His grave in Westminster Abbey was meant to be modest, though he is buried in the Abbey's Poets' Corner.
Notable people
- Charles Dickens
- John Dickens
- Catherine Dickens
- Ellen Ternan
- John Forster
- Angela Burdett-Coutts
Keep exploring
Henry VIII
Published
He was a lean, athletic prince who could outjoust anyone in Europe. By the end he needed a mechanical chair to get upstairs, and had rewritten England's religion.
William Shakespeare
Published
Shakespeare spelled his own name several ways, left his wife his 'second-best bed', and still gave English some of its most quoted phrases.
Owain Glyndŵr
Published
He was a Welsh squire trained in law who ended up proclaimed Prince of Wales, and then he simply vanished. Nobody knows where Owain Glyndŵr died.