Charles Dickens: The Life
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England. He was the second of eight children of John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father would later become the model for a character in the novel David Copperfield. Although he was a solitary child, Dickens was observant and good natured however Charles did not have a happy childhood. When he was smaller his family moved frequently and lived in a constant state of financial turmoil. John Dickens, Charles’s father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. His father constantly lived beyond his means and was eventually sent to debtor’s prison were he spend most of his life in, eventually the family was forced to move into a shabby suburb of Camden Town This humiliation deeply troubled him and even as an adult he was rarely able to speak of it. When he was twelve years old he was taken out of school and forced to work in a blacking warehouse for meager wages among rough and cruel employees, this was basically one of the worst jobs anyone could have. This period of time affected Dickens greatly as he went into a period of depression and felt abandoned because while he was working at the factory his sister continued her education at the Royal Academy of Music where she was winning awards for her academic achievements. Dickens’s mother died at the age of seventy nine while John Dickens was still in prison. Even though it was a negative experience for Charles being on his own at the age of twelve made him learn many necessary life skills which also developed in him a driving ambition and a boundless energy that transferred into every thing that he did. As an adult he almost never spoke of the darker periods of his younger years. From this time period come many of the major themes of his more popular novels.
Even though Charles Dickens did not have a normal education it would be a mistake to think of him as an uneducated man just because he had little formal schooling. Dickens did what everyone should do, learn from life. Late in his teens Charles learned shorthand and became a court reporter which introduced him to journalism and aroused his contempt for politics. At the age of twenty one he knew he was destined to become a novelist. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays appeared in periodicals he contributed to monthly magazines. He ended up producing hundreds of essays and edited hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. His first published sketch A Dinner at Poplar Walk made him extremely proud and was eager to write more. His next literary venture was Posthumous Paper of the Pickwick Club; by the time the fourth monthly installment was published he had become the most popular author in England. He had success because he had experiences with the same joys and tragedies his characters had and he also had the great talent to make his readers feel and see all these experiences in detail. As his success grew he also became a target for critics who called him verbose and morbid and thought his politics were too radical, simplistic, or opportunistic. In the 1840’s, after traveling to America and Europe he felt he had begun a different stage in his life. His writings became more serious and involved and there was more planning on his part .
While most well known authors are only capable of writing one really good novel during their careers Dickens wrote several of these. A Christmas Carol is a novel that has even been adapted into film version several times. This story was set in the French revolution and it is one of his most appreciated works. In this story its evident how Dickens was becoming disenchanted with the economic philosophy of the world. He blamed much of society’s ills on people’s obsession with earning and acquiring a status based on money. Another novel which reflects his understandings of the lower class is Oliver Twist which was published in monthly installments.
liver Twist depicts the London underworld and hard years of the orphan Oliver Twist. Most of the novels that he wrote reflected his personal life. For instance while Great Expectations is not directly autobiographical it tells us that Dickens resented having to work in a factory as a child. He also used his personal experience of work in a factory in David Copperfield. In this novel he depicts a young man who grows up in a very similar way to one of his own. Also in A Tale of Two Cities, critics suggest that the part of Dickens’s life that is most reflected is his personal relationships with his wife Ellen Ternan.
Charles Dickens’s marriage also influenced greatly his writing material. In 1836 Dickens married Catherine Hogbarth, the daughter of his friend George Hogbarth who was a newspaper editor. This marriage produced ten children
Years later he and Catherine separated in 1858 due to his unfaithfulness. Some suspect that he was romantically involved with both of Catherine’s sisters. He also had a mistress named Ellen Ternan who was an actress he had met when he became interested in the stage. After his separation with Catherine he married Ellen. Dickens’s health began deteriorating in the 1860’s most likely caused by the stress in his personal life and career. Dickens collapsed in April 1869 after which his doctors put a stop to his public performances. Dickens died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in June 1870. Some of his friends late thought that strain put on him to do public readings killed him. He was buried in the poet’s corner of Westminster Abbey, London.
Through the rough experiences that he had, Dickens was able to look back on his early life and write world-famous stories about them. Charles Dickens success comes from his ability to tell his stories from personal experiences. He developed the skill of telling his own story of his life through another character or cast of characters. He accomplished a lot in his lifetime and most importantly he thrilled his readers for many years with his realistic stories about real people forced into real situations. Something about Charles Dickens and his ability to take his reader to unbelievable places with his imaginative powers allows him the honor of being the most popular English novelist of the 19th century
