Facts on... Charles Dickens

 CHARLES DICKENS

Writer

 Full name: Charles John Huffam Dickens

 Born: February 7, 1812, Landport, United Kingdom

 Died: June 9, 1870, Gads Hill Place, United Kingdom

 Spouse: Catherine Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. His family lived in Chatham until 1822: Dickens referring later to this period as the happiest of his life, and Chatham was often used as background for some of his novels. 

His father, John Dickens, was imprisoned for debt when Charles was just 12-year-old. After this, Dickens was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory earning six shillings a week (less than half a pound)  to help support the family. The work itself probably lasted for no more than a year, but the dark experience left scars on his imagination and completely changed his view of society. This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment would be a heavy influence on the world Dickens' would create through his  fiction.

Throughout his life, Dickens wrote 15 major novels including Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and his personal favorite, David Copperfield, which tells the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. He also wrote Christmas Books, the most popular being A Christmas Carol. 

Charles Dickens died at age 57, on June 9, 1870. He had wished to be buried in a small cemetery in Rochester, Kent, but the Nation did not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Dickens is considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. He enjoyed a wide popularity, and his way of writing made him one of the great forces in 19th-century literature.