Edmond Perrier's Victorian Museum

Charles Dickens was a British novelist, dramatist and journalist. He was born on February 7th 1812 in Portsmouth, in the United Kingdom. He had a happy childhood, living in a modest family with seven brothers and sisters. In 1816, they moved to London. When he was twelve, his father went to prison because of debts and the family’s situation grew desperate. Charles Dickens was forced to leave school to work. He was one of the eldest children of the family and began to work in a blacking factory with appalling conditions. This experience affected him a lot, he had the nostalgia of his childhood and had the obsession of hunger and poverty. It had profound psychological and sociological effects on him. He discovered poverty and it made him the most vigorous and influential voice of the working classes on his age. He never forgot this experience and it became fictionalised in two of his best-known novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

Dickens began his literary career as a journalist. In 1833, he began by writing short stories to periodicals under the pseudonym of “Boz”. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and had ten children before they separated in 1858. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was one of the most popular work of the time and after this success, he embarked on a full-time career as a novelist. He produced a lot of works at an incredible rate: Oliver Twist, 1837-39; Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39; Barnaby Rudge 1840-41. He travelled a lot in the United States, Canada, Italy and Switzerland while writing novels, his energy was inexhaustible. David Copperfield is a partly autobiographic novel: it tells the story of a boy who lived happily with his mother, whose father was dead, and who had to work, as Dickens did. Moreover, there are many allusions in relation to his personal experience.

Charles Dickens died at home, on July 9th 1870, at the age of 58, because of a stroke. He left unfinished works. He is buried at Westminster Abbey and on his tomb you can read: “He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers is lost to the world”.