Charles Dickens
Born: 7 February 1812,
Birth Name: Charles John Huffam Dickens
Died: 9 June 1870, Gad's
Charles Dickens was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime.
Charles Dickens was as the second of eight children to John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at
A 12-year-old Dickens began working 10 hour days in a
A young Charles Dickens
In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a law clerk, a junior office position with potential to become a lawyer, a profession for which he later showed his dislike in his many literary works. He later became a court stenographer at the age of 17. In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell. Her parents disapproved of their courtship and they effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in
In 1834, Dickens became a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate and travelling
On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth, the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk,
A scene from Oliver Twist, from an early 20th Century edition.
In 1842, he travelled with his wife to the United States and Canada, a journey which was successful despite his support for the abolition of slavery. The trip is described in the short travelogue American Notes for General Circulation and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Dickens's work continued to be popular, especially A Christmas Carol, the first of his Christmas books, which was reputedly written in a matter of weeks.
After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846), Dickens continued his success with Dombey and Son; David Copperfield; Bleak House; Hard Times; Little Dorrit; A Tale of Two Cities; and Great Expectations. Dickens was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor to, the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858-1870).
In 1856, his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This large house in
In 1857, in preparation for public performances of The Frozen Deep, a play on which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had collaborated, Dickens hired professional actresses to play the female parts. With one actress, Ellen Ternan, Dickens formed a bond which was to last the rest of his life. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, as both Dickens and Ternan burned each other's letters, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life. On his death, he settled an annuity on her which made her a financially independent woman.
Charles Dickens used his rich imagination, sense of humour and detailed memories, particularly of his childhood, to enliven his fiction.
When Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, divorce was almost unthinkable, particularly for someone as famous as he was, and so he continued to maintain her in a house for the next 20 years until she died. Although they appeared to be initially happy together, Catherine did not seem to share quite the same boundless energy for life which Dickens had. Nevertheless, her job of looking after their ten children, and the pressure of living with a world-famous novelist and keeping house for him, certainly did not help.
Catherine had her sister Mary move in to help her, but there were rumours that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law, possibly fuelled by the fact that she remained at Gadshill to look after the younger children when Catherine left. An indication of his marital dissatisfaction was when, he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell. Maria was by this time married as well, but she seemed to have fallen short of Dickens's romantic memory of her.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from
Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquiry into the crash, as it would have become known that he was travelling that day with Ellen Ternan and her mother, which could have caused a scandal. Ellen had been Dickens's companion since the breakdown of his marriage, and, as he had met her in 1857, she was most likely the ultimate reason for that breakdown. She continued to be his companion, and likely mistress, until his death.
Dickens, though unharmed, never really recovered from the Staplehurst crash, and his normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood after a long interval. Much of his time was taken up with public readings from his best-loved novels. Dickens was fascinated by the theatre as an escape from the world, and theatres and theatrical people appear in Nicholas Nickleby. The traveling shows were extremely popular and, after three tours of British Isles, Dickens gave his first public reading in the
The effort and passion he put into these readings with individual character voices is also thought to have contributed to his death. When he undertook another English tour of readings, he became ill and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, on 9 June 1870, he died at home at Gad's
Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of
Did You Know
Claire Tomalin's book, The Invisible Woman, set out to prove that Ellen Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life, and has subsequently been turned into a play by Simon Gray called Little Nell.
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