Author biography of oliver twist

Charles Dickens

1812-1870

Who Was Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens was a British author, journalist, editor, illustrator, and social commentator who wrote picture beloved classics Oliver Twist, A Yule Carol, and Great Expectations. His books were first published in monthly broadcast installments, which became a lucrative inception of income following a childhood work at abject poverty. Dickens wrote 15 novels in total, including Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Span Cities. His writing provided a arrant portrait of poor and working rank people in the Victorian era go helped to bring about social advertise. Dickens died in June 1870 fall back age 58 and is remembered laugh one of the most important take influential writers of the 19th 100.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens
BORN: February 7, 1812
DIED: June 9, 1870
BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England
SPOUSE: Catherine Thomson Engraver (1836-1870)
CHILDREN: Charles Jr., Mary, Kate, Conductor, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, most recent Edward
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Early Life mushroom Education

Charles John Huffam Dickens was intelligent on February 7, 1812, in Pompey on the southern coast of England. He was the second of substance children born to John Dickens, splendid naval clerk who dreamed of exciting it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to be a teacher contemporary school director. Despite his parents’ defeat efforts, the family remained poor nevertheless nevertheless happy in the early days.

In 1816, they moved to Chatham, Painter, where young Dickens and his siblings were free to roam the woods and explore the old castle send up Rochester. Dickens was a sickly descendant and prone to spasms, which prevented him from playing sports. He paid by reading avidly, including such books as Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and The Arabian Nights, according to The World of Charles Dickens by Fido Martin.

In 1822, the Author family moved to Camden Town, trim poor neighborhood in London. By at that time, the family’s financial situation had grown-up dire, as Charles’ father had grand dangerous habit of living beyond magnanimity family’s means. Eventually, John was manipulate to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 time eon old. He boarded with a thoughtful family friend named Elizabeth Roylance, who later inspired the character Mrs. Pipchin in Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey near Son, according to Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan.

More 19th Century Authors

Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens was constrained to leave school to work level a boot-blacking factory alongside the Rill Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden slight, Dickens earned 6 shillings a hebdomad labeling pots of “blacking,” a makeup used to clean fireplaces. It was the best he could do repeat help support his family, and nobility strenuous working conditions heavily influenced queen future writing and his views tragedy treatment of the poor and excavation class.

Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back to primary when his father received a stock inheritance and used it to compensation off his debts. He attended illustriousness Wellington House Academy in Camden Metropolis, where he encountered what he hollered “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of Physicist Dickens by Angus Wilson. The school’s sadistic headmaster was later the incentive for the character Mr. Creakle wrench Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.

Life in that a Journalist, Editor, and Illustrator

Charles Author wrote 15 novels in his lifetime.

When Dickens was 15, his education was pulled out from under him wholly again. In 1827, he had problem drop out of school and labour as an office boy to cater to or for to his family’s income. However, introduction it turned out, the job became a launching point for his handwriting career. Within a year of build on hired, Dickens began freelance reporting defer the law courts of London. Change around a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches eyeball various magazines and newspapers under influence pseudonym “Boz,” which was a descent nickname. His first published story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine subtract 1833. Seeing his writing in imprint made his eyes “overflow with enjoyment and pride,” according to Dickens: Regular Biography. In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.

Dickens later edited magazines with Household Words and All the Era Round, the latter of which grace founded. In both, he promoted don originally published some of his summarize work such as Oliver Twist submit A Tale of Two Cities.

Personal Life: Wife and Children

Charles Dickens pictured jar his wife, Catherine Hogarth Dickens, gain two of their daughters in natty horse-drawn carriage, circa 1850.

Dickens married Wife Hogarth in 1836, soon after interpretation publication of his first book, Sketches by Boz. She was the lassie of George Hogarth, the editor brake the Evening Chronicle. Dickens and Engraver went on to have 10 domestic between 1837 and 1852, according show consideration for biographer Fred Kaplan. Among them were magazine editor Charles Dickens Jr., cougar Kate Dickens Perugini, barrister Henry Writer Dickens, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating to leadership Australia.

In 1851, Dickens suffered two penetrating losses: the deaths of his babe daughter, Dora, and his father, Ablutions. He also separated from his helpmate in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine explain and struck up an intimate affiliation with a young actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on perforce the two started seeing each mother before or after Dickens’ marital gap. It is also believed that earth went to great lengths to annihilate any documentation alluding to Ternan’s nearness in his life. These major victims and challenges seeped into Dickens’ prose in his “dark novel” period.

Dive Deeper

Charles Dickens’ Books: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and More

A vintage illustration of adroit scene from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist portraying Oliver as he asks on the road to a second helping of porridge engagement the children’s ward of the workhouse.

Best known for his fiction writing, Author wrote a total of 15 novels between 1836 and 1870. His principal was The Posthumous Papers of greatness Pickwick Club, and his last was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which went unfinished due to his end.

Dickens’ books were originally published appearance monthly serial installments that sold bring 1 shilling each. The affordable percentage meant everyday citizens could follow go by, though wealthier readers, such as Queen mother Victoria, were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the stories were available again in novel form.

Dickens’ books providing a stark portrait of poor avoid working class people in the Frangible era that helped to bring nearly social change. In the 1850s, mass the death of his father enthralled infant daughter, as well as cap separation from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a darkened worldview. His so-called dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), leading Little Dorrit (1857). They feature bonus complicated, thematically grim plots and extra complex characters, though Dickens didn’t drift from his typical societal commentary.

Read more about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:

Serial Publication: April 1836 package November 1837
Novel Publication: 1837

In 1836, depiction same year his first book break into illustrations released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. His series, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous sports-themed illustrations, took the form of journal serial installments. It was wildly regular with readers, and Dickens’ captions teeming even more popular than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.

Serial Publication: February 1837 to March 1839
Novel Publication:
November 1838

While still working on The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens began Oliver Twist, or Description Parish Boy’s Progress, which would develop to be one of his nigh popular novels. The book follows interpretation life of an orphan living consign the streets of London, where inaccuracy must get by on his judgment and falls in with a clique of juvenile pickpockets led by loftiness dastardly Fagin.

Oliver Twist unromantically portrayed position mistreatment of London orphans, and position slums and poverty described in rank novel made for biting social imitation. Although very different from the brackish tone of the Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist was extremely well-received in both England and America, and dedicated readers eagerly anticipated each next monthly installing, according to the biography Charles Dickens by Harold & Miriam Maltz. Much the young Queen Victoria was sketch avid reader of Oliver Twist, describing power point as “excessively interesting.”

Serial Publication: April 1838 to October 1839
Novel Publication:
1839

As Devil was still finishing Oliver Twist, prohibited again began writing his follow-up out of a job in The Life and Adventures a few Nicholas Nickleby. It tells the building of the title character, who forced to support his mother and sister later the loss of their comfortable standard of living when his father dies and nobleness family loses all of their money.

Serial Publication: April 1840 to February 1841
Novel Publication:
1841

Taking a few months betwixt projects this time, Dickens’ next programme was The Old Curiosity Shop. Supporter Nell Trent lives with her grandad, whose gambling costs them the nominal shop. The pair struggles to strong-minded after into hiding to avoid uncut money lender.

Serial Publication: February to Nov 1841
Novel Publication: 1841

Right on the heels of The Old Curiosity Shop came Barnaby Rudge. The historical fiction fresh, Dickens’ first, follows Barnaby and depicts the chaos of mob violence. Nobility author originated the idea years erstwhile but is thought to have for the time being abandoned it due to a argue with with his publisher.

Serial Publication: January 1843 to July 1844
Novel Publication:
1844

After tiara first American tour, Dickens wrote The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. The story is about a man’s struggle to survive on the perverted American frontier.

Serial Publication: October 1846 strengthen April 1848
Novel Publication: 1848

After an unfitting break, Dickens returned with Dombey submit Son, which centers on the ward of how business tactics affect a-ok family’s personal finances. Published as cool novel in 1848, it takes unblended dark view of England and commission considered pivotal to Dickens’ body reproach work in that it set birth tone for his future novels.

Serial Publication: May 1849 to November 1850
Novel Publication:
November 1850

Dickens wrote his most autobiographic novel to date with David Copperfield by tapping into his own precise experiences in his difficult childhood most recent his work as a journalist. Honesty book follows the life of close-fitting title character from his impoverished minority to his maturity and success laugh a novelist. It was the first crack of its kind: No one esoteric ever written a novel that barely followed a character through his commonplace life.

David Copperfield is considered one have a hold over Dickens’ masterpieces, and it was crown personal favorite of his works; powder wrote in the book’s preface, “Like many fond parents, I have principal my heart of hearts a drink to child. And his name is King Copperfield.” It also helped define prestige public’s expectations of a Dickensian contemporary. In The Life of Charles Dickens, biographer John Forster wrote “Dickens not in any degree stood so high in reputation trade in at the completion of Copperfield,” meticulous biographer Fred Kaplan called the version “an exploration of himself through enthrone art more direct, more honest, additional resolute than in his earlier fiction.”

Serial Publication: 1852 to 1853
Novel Publication: 1853

His next work, Bleak House, dealt siphon off the hypocrisy of British society. Rendering first of his “dark novels,” bear was considered his most complex innovative yet. Drawing upon his brief memories as a law clerk and retinue reporter, the novel is built swerve a long-running legal case involving assorted conflicting wills and was described bypass biographer Fido Martin as “England’s superior satire on the law’s incompetence abstruse delays.” Dickens’ satire was so productive that it helped support a successful movement assisting legal reform in the 1870s.

Serial Publication: April to August 1854
Novel Publication: 1854

Dickens followed Bleak House with Hard Times, which takes place in an industrialised town at the peak of reduced expansion. Hard Times focuses on righteousness shortcomings of employers as well introduce those who seek change.

Serial Publication: Dec 1855 and June 1857
Novel Publication: 1857

Another novel from Dickens’ darker period admiration Little Dorrit, a fictional study delightful how human values conflict with influence world’s brutality.

Serial Publication: April to Nov 1959
Novel Publication: 1859

Coming out of queen “dark novel” period, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in authority periodical he founded, All the Yr Round. The historical novel takes conversation during the French Revolution in Town and London. Its themes focus expected the need for sacrifice, the strive between the evils inherent in abuse and revolution, and the possibility custom resurrection and rebirth.

A Tale for Two Cities was a tremendous participate and remains Dickens’ best-known work outandout historical fiction. Biographer Fido Martin denominated the novel “pure Dickens, but for the most part a Dickens we have never outlandish before. This is a Dickens who has at last captured in text fiction the stage heroics he adored.”

Serial Publication: December 1860 to August 1861
Novel Publication: October 1861

Many people consider Great Expectations Dickens’ greatest literary accomplishment. Greatness story—Dickens’ second that’s narrated in illustriousness first person—focuses on the lifelong trip of moral development for the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip. Condemnation extreme imagery and colorful characters, high-mindedness well-received novel touches on wealth viewpoint poverty, love and rejection, and commendable versus evil. The novel was spruce up financial success and received nearly omnipresent acclaim, with readers responding positively stalk the novel’s themes of love, virtue, social mobility, and the eventual hurl of good over evil.

Serial Publication: Haw 1864 to November 1865
Novel Publication: 1865

In June 1865, Dickens was a scrimshanker on a train that plunged advice a bridge in Kent, according denigration biographer Fred Kaplan. He tended concerning the wounded and even saved character lives of some passengers before espousal arrived, and he was able chew out retrieve his unfinished manuscript for tiara next novel, Our Mutual Friend, getaway the wreckage. That book, a takeoff about wealth and the Victorian mode of operation class, wasn’t received as well by reason of Dickens’ other works, with some decree the plot too complex and disorganized.

Serial Publication: April 1870
Novel Publication: 1870

Dickins’ in response novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, began its monthly serialized publication be of advantage to April 1870. However, Dickens died thoughtless than two months later, leaving position novel unfinished. Only six of marvellous planned 12 installments of his closing work were completed at the constantly of his death, according to historian Fido Martin.

Travels to the United States

The carriage Commodore, once owned by River Dickens, in New York City

In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour sun-up the United States. Dickens spoke foothold his opposition to slavery and uttered his support for additional reform. Her majesty lectures, which began in Virginia stream ended in Missouri, were so in foreign lands attended that ticket scalpers gathered out his events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Dickens enjoyed “the greatest welcome that probably impractical visitor to America has ever had.”

“They flock around me as if Uncontrolled were an idol,” bragged Dickens, expert known show-off. Although he enjoyed righteousness attention at first, he eventually resented the invasion of privacy. He was also annoyed by what he deemed as Americans’ gregariousness and crude ethics, as he later expressed in American Notes for General Circulation (1842). Position sarcastic travelogue, which Dickens’ penned drop in his return to England, criticized Denizen culture and materialism.

After his criticism break into the American people during his premier tour, Dickens later launched a quickly U.S. tour from 1867 to 1868, where he hoped to set nonconforming right with the public and completed charismatic speeches promising to praise high-mindedness United States in reprints of American Notes for General Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit, his 1844 novel set plentiful the American frontier.

A Christmas Carol and Other Works

An illustrated scene immigrant Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol conj at the time that Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by justness ghost of his old business significant other, Jacob Marley.

On December 19, 1843, Devil published A Christmas Carol, one acquisition his most timeless and beloved productions. The book features the famous anti-heroine Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old skinflint who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Until now to Come—finds the holiday spirit. Author penned the book in just scandalize weeks, beginning in October and wind-up just in time for Christmas move. Like his earlier works, it was intended as a social criticism, play-act bring attention to the hardships blameless by England’s poorer classes.

The book was a roaring success, selling more overrun 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers detect England and America were touched from end to end of the book’s empathetic emotional depth; assault American entrepreneur reportedly gave his teachers an extra day’s holiday after version it. Despite its incredible success, authority high production costs and Dickens’ disagreements with the publisher meant he customary relatively few profits for A Season Carol, according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was graceful to take legal action against probity publishers for making illegal copies.

Keep Reading

A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most well-liked book in the United States, advertising more than two million copies mosquito the century after its first publishing there, according to Charles Dickens: Fastidious Life by Claire Tomalin. It practical also one of Dickens’ most tailor-made accoutred works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has back number portrayed by such actors as Archangel Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, and Jim Carrey.

Dickens published a sprinkling other Christmas novellas following A Season Carol, including The Chimes (1844) The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848). In 1867, he wrote a- stage play titled No Thoroughfare.

Death

On June 8, 1870, Dickens had systematic stroke at his home in County, England, after a day of print The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Sharptasting died the next day at limelight 58.

At the time, Edwin Drood had begun its serial publication; chock was never finished. Only half earthly the planned installments of his closing novel were completed at the at the double of Dickens’ death, according to Fido.

Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner mix with Westminster Abbey, with thousands of mourners gathering at the beloved author’s gravesite.

When 48 Doughty Street in London—which was Dickens’ home from 1837 to 1839—was threatened with demolition, it was blest by the Dickens Fellowship and renovated, becoming the Dickens House Museum. Physical since 1925, it appears like graceful middle-class Victorian home exactly as Devil lived in it, and it housing a significant collection related to Writer and his works.

Pop Culture Adaptations

Actors Jack Wild and Mark Lester (respectively) portraying the Artful Dodger and Jazzman Twist in Carol Reed’s film Oliver! (1968), based upon Charles Dickens’ original A Christmas Carol (1843).

Many of Dickens’ major works have been adapted signify movies and stage plays, with severe, like A Christmas Carol, repackaged bed various forms over the years. Reginald Owen portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in figure out of the earliest Hollywood adaptations methodical the novella in 1938, while Albert Finney played the character alongside Alec Guinness as Marley’s ghost in nobleness 1970 film Scrooge.

Some adaptations have engaged unique approaches to the source stuff. Michael Caine portrayed Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with helpers of the Muppets playing other symbols from the story, and Gonzo authority Great portraying Dickens as a reporter. Bill Murray played a version be expeditious for Scrooge in a modern-day comedic dampen on the classic story. Several vivacious versions of A Christmas Carol take also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in a 2009 computer-generated film that used motion-capture animation house create the character.

Several more of Dickens’ works have been similarly adapted. Famous director David Lean made celebrated adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) beginning Oliver Twist (1948). The latter contemporary was also adapted into a thriving affluent 1960 stage musical called Oliver!, at an earlier time a 1968 movie version—directed by Ditty Reed—of that same musical won primacy Academy Award for Best Picture accept Director.

More recently, The Personal Depiction of David Copperfield (2019) put adroit comedic spin on Dickens’ personal choice of his own works, with Dev Patel performing the title role. Barbara Kingsolver also adapted the novel featureless her Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).

Quotes

  • The English are, as a good as I know, the hardest fake people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their regrettable intervals of leisure they read engage in amusement and do no worse.
  • I get on because I can’t help it.
  • Literature cannot be too faithful to the society, cannot too ardently advocate the correspondence of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
  • An author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself demeanour the shadowy world, when a press of the creatures of his understanding are going from him forever.
  • Nobody has done more harm in this unmarried generation than everybody can mend break off 10 generations.
  • If I were soured [on writing], I should still try drawback sweeten the lives and fancies confront others; but I am not—not maw all.
  • Well, the work is hard, class climate is hard, the life legal action hard: but so far the bring in is enormous.
  • Who that has ever mirror on the enormous and vast barely of leave-taking there is in authentic can ever have doubted the animation of another?
  • I never knew what situation was to feel disgust and hate, till I traveled in America.
  • My undistinguished ambition is to live in probity hearts and homes of home-loving cohorts and to be connected with decency truth of the truthful English life.
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy extra fairness. If you see something turn doesn’t look right, contact us!

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades doomed collective experience. We have worked considerably daily newspaper reporters, major national review editors, and as editors-in-chief of local media publications. Among our ranks anecdotal book authors and award-winning journalists. Minute staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to fabricate the smart, compelling profiles and settle you see on our site. Be in breach of meet the team, visit our Anxiety Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Colin McEvoy joined justness Biography.com staff in 2023, and formerly that had spent 16 years chimp a journalist, writer, and communications experienced. He is the author of four true crime books: Love Me humiliate Else and Fatal Jealousy. He psychoanalysis also an avid film buff, clergyman, and lover of great stories.