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Charles Dickens

CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM DICKENS was born February 7, 1812, at Portsea, England, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay office. He died at Gadshill Place, in Kent, on June 9, 1870.

His dreams of writing came to him when as a boy he read breathlessly the battered novels in his father's library. He became a reporter on the London newspapers, and wrote (1836) "Sketches by Boz," wherein are, in miniature, all the abounding virtues of his novels.

The "Pickwick Papers" (1837) were a great success. Their inimitable rollicking humor captivated the English reading world. His first extended novel was "Oliver Twist" (1838), followed by "Nicholas Nickleby" (1838-39), "Old Curiosity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge" (1840-41). He produced some sixteen major novels, the last, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (1870), being left unfinished. "David Copperfield" (1849-50), held by many to be his masterpiece, and by not a few to be the greatest story ever written, is supposed to be semi-autobiographical. Many of his novels were published in instalments, and never before or since has any literary publication excited such a furore. After his initial successes, Dickens's life was a triumphal procession, saddened only by domestic unhappiness. He visited America, where his works were even more popular than in England, in 1842 and 1867-68. He wrote in his will his own best epitaph, "I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country on my published works." He might well have substituted "the world" for "my country."

Perhaps the quality that distinguishes his novels among all others is their abounding humor. A poet has written:

Make way, Shakspere! This is he Who hath ta'en the throne of mirth from thee.