Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and grew up poor. When his father went to debtors’ prison, 12-year-old Charles worked in a factory blacking bottles. This experience shaped his writing about poverty and child labor in industrial England.
Dickens started as a journalist and shorthand reporter. The Pickwick Papers (1836) brought his first fame. Most of his novels appeared as monthly serials in magazines, with cliffhanger endings that kept readers waiting for the next installment. Americans waited at New York docks for ships carrying the latest issue, eager to find out what happened in The Old Curiosity Shop.
Scrooge, Uriah Heep, Fagin, Miss Havisham, Mr. Micawber - these characters became types, references still used today. Dickens populated his novels with distinctive minor characters, each with their own speech patterns and physical habits. He found them walking the London streets, transforming the people he saw into fictional creations.
Oliver Twist exposed London’s criminal world and the workhouse system. Bleak House criticized the Court of Chancery and its endless legal proceedings that drained families’ fortunes. Hard Times attacked utilitarian education and industrial dehumanization. Even the ghost story A Christmas Carole carried a message about social responsibility.
Dickens toured Britain and America reading his work aloud. The performances exhausted him - he sweated through several shirts in a single reading. American audiences sometimes shouted during shows. He died in 1870 while writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The half-written mystery has never been completed.
Schools still assign his novels and films continue to adapt them. Reading the full versions reveals more than the famous characters quoted in popular culture. His social criticism and skill at weaving multiple plot lines together make the novels worth reading, even for those who think they know Dickens from abridged versions.