As a young child, Charles Dickens was taken by his father to look at a house called Gad's Hill Place, in Kent. They were a poor family and such a house was seen as something to aspire towards. Charles never forgot and forty years later he bought Gad's Hill. By then he was a celebrated author of many great novels and a wealthy man.
Dickens was born in 1812 in Hampshire, where his father worked as a clerk in the naval pay office. John Dickens earned a reasonable salary but was never able to manage his finances successfully. In 1824 he ended up in Marshalsea debtor's prison and later in his life when his son became famous, John even stooped so low as to forge Charles' signature to obtain money.
Charles was close to his older sister, Fanny, and they both received some early education in a "dame school" and later, when the family had moved to Chatham, he was placed in a school run by William Giles. However in 1824 the 12 year old Charles was sent to work for a few shillings a week in a blacking factory. John Dickens was then in prison and, as was common then, the whole family moved in alongside him, so the young Charles would have breakfast in the prison before setting off to walk the three miles to his work. The boy felt as if he had been thrown away and wrote later of "the secret agony of my soul" at that hopeless period of his young life which lasted for almost a year.
Family fortunes rose and Charles was again enrolled in school, the Wellington House Academy, where he was able to stay for two years until once more his father suffered financial failure. At the age of fifteen, Charles Dickens was ready to enter the world and began work as a junior clerk in a law firm. The Law was to appear in many of his novels, notably "Bleak House". At this time Dickens set out to learn shorthand in order to become a reporter in the press gallery of the House of Commons.
The first love of his life for Dickens was Maria Beadnell, an attachment that lasted for some years before she finally rejected him, a spurning that may have urged him into writing, though the early short stories of 1833-1834 are all-but forgotten. More importantly, Dickens made the acquaintance of the Hogarth family and, in 1835, he became engaged to Catherine, the eldest daughter. "The Pickwick Papers" was conceived at this time and published in monthly parts in 1836 and, with the prospect of financial reward on the way, Dickens and Catherine were married.
In January 1838 Catherine gave birth to the Dickens' first child and then suffered from a post-natal nervous condition. She suffered similarly following the births of her subsequent ten children. Catherine's younger sister, Mary, was an almost constant guest in the family and there is no doubt that Charles was immensely fond of her. She died in their house, suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of seventeen and Charles experienced intense and lasting grief at her death. For the rest of his life he wore a ring that he removed from her finger.
Dickens and his growing family had moved to a more spacious house, 48 Doughty Street in 1837, but they moved again two years later to 1 Devonshire Terrace. From 1851 to 1860 the prosperous author leased Tavistock House in Bloomsbury, while regular summer holidays were spent by the family in Broadstairs, Kent. Dickens and Catherine visited the eastern United States for 6 months in 1842, a visit he later recorded in "American Notes". The whole family, with several children by now, spent 1844 to 1846 traveling in Italy, Switzerland and France and Dickens himself later continued to spend time on the continent traveling with friends.
In 1856 Dickens was able to buy Gad's Hill and following renovations the family moved there in 1857. Dickens continued to travel and to carry out reading tours of his work adhering to a punishing routine and it was at Gad's Hill that the author collapsed and died in 1870. Dickens and his wife Catherine, had separated in 1858 after some unhappy years of incompatibility, and that year Dickens fell in love with an actress, Ellen Ternan; their affaire lasted until his death.
During the years of his marriage, fatherhood and restless movement around London and abroad, Dickens was always aware of the social injustices of his age and social change was dramatic in Victorian England especially with the rise of machinery to replace human labor. In Dickens' time, laws were introduced to address poverty, education and child labor. He saw the spread of the railway system that made cheaper travel more available.
Dickens wrote fifteen major novels that enjoyed huge success in his lifetime with characters who will endure forever in English literature. His command of language was surpassed only by Shakespeare; his boundless energy and inexhaustible imagination peopled his novels with unforgettable creations, among them Scrooge, Pecksniff and Mrs. Jellyby. Once met, who doesn't recall the evil dwarf, Quilp and Fagin who runs a thieves school ...and Nancy? Dickens created and named nearly 1000 unique characters in his novels.
In 1865 Dickens was involved in a train accident in which ten people were killed, he himself avoiding injury. His "readings" were very taxing and Dickens developed heart problems in the late 1860s. He continued to push himself and suffered a breakdown in early 1869. One year later, at home in his beloved Gad's Hill he collapsed and died the following day. He had wished to be buried privately with no memorial, an expression of his basic simplicity; but the nation demanded a more public ceremony and he lies in Westminster Abbey with the other literary greats of his country.
Reference:Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography