A Brief Overview of the Life of Classic Author, Charles Dickens

A Brief Overview of the Life of Classic Author, Charles Dickens


This year, 2012 honours the bicentenary of the writer, Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens is truly a
finest writer of classic English books.

His rags to riches story commenced on 7 February 1812. At the age of nine (9) he was sent to
school only to be taken out again soon after owing to his father being jailed because of bad debts.

The young Charles was made to work in terrible surroundings in a blacking factory, and where he
stayed put for a further 3 years. He went back to school thereafter, yet never forgot his
experiences in the factory and drew on them to write two of his better known classic fiction books
of all time, 'David Copperfield' and 'Great Expectations'.

As a small lad, barely twelve years of age, Charles Dickens spent days of " embarrassment and
neglect" pasting labels upon containers of black shoe polish, in a rat-infested London warehouse.
He visited his relatives for the most part on Sundays, when he went to Marshalsea, a debtor's
prison at which his entire family, apart from one sister, resided.

Throughout these years, Dickens swung back and forth ranging from what good friends and
acquaintances eventually recounted as either an extremely jolly disposition or crippling
depression.

Throughout the course of his life, Dickens never told another person, other than his wife and his
closest friend, about all those years of poverty, abandonment, and worry. This era of his life
defined him and his books which is really essential to know this in order to understand the writer
himself. This period appeared to put a stain on Dickens who happened to be a intelligent and
vulnerable boy, that coloured everything he accomplished, even though as mentioned before he
never spoke on the story except obliquely by means of his fiction.

Several mysterious details of Dickens are that when he was a youthful boy he observed an
exquisite house and was fascinated by it. His father told him if he worked hard he may someday
reside in a house like it. Charles went one better and in actual fact bought the same house he'd
seen all those years ago.

Most of the people in his books, like Monks from Oliver Twist; Guster from Bleak House and

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Bradley Headstone from Our Mutual Friend, suffered from epilepsy and it was claimed that
Dickens himself endured the illness also. Specialists came to this interpretation after going through
several of Dickens' journals in which he explains the signs and symptoms of epilepsy correctly.

Dickens is well known for his books about Christmas, yet inspite of his efforts couldn't get anyone
to publish the initial one. However at a substantial loss to himself he marketed it on his own.
Marketed in 1843 it is known to be a Christmas classic - A Christmas Carol.


Most of the characters in his books will have slightly unusual nicknames like Sweedlepipe and
Pumblechook to name but two. Dickens was also believed to give nicknames to his own sons and
daughters, of which there were 10, including Boz and Skittles.

Dickens began his literary career as a journalist which actually enabled him to publish his works
on a recurring basis, starting with the incredibly triumphant 'Pickwick Papers' which was only the
start...

As well as a large number of works of fiction Dickens also wrote travel books and plays, edited
periodicals and was an administrator of some charitable organisations. Dickens died of a stroke in
1870 just before the conclusion of his book The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which has only recently
been finished and made into a TV series) and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

At present all of these novels, a lot of which directly mirrored Dickens' own life, continue to have a
forceful mental influence on readers.

Author:
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