Dickens

Dickens

British writer Charles Dickens created some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. He was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812. His happy early childhood was interrupted when his father was sent to debtors' prison, and young Dickens had to go to work in a factory at age twelve. Later, he took jobs as an office boy and journalist before publishing essays and stories in the 1830s. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers, made him a famous and popular author at the age of twenty-five. Subsequent works were published serially in periodicals and cemented his reputation as a master of colorful characterization, and as a harsh critic of social evils and corrupt institutions. His many books include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities. He died at his country home Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent on June 9, 1870 from a stroke, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. Contrary to his wishes for an inexpensive and unostentatious burial, he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.