by Alex Storey

Created on: December 08, 2010   Last Updated: December 10, 2010

Charles John Huffam Dickens is buried at Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. His spouse was Catherine Hogarth. Born in Portsmouth, Hampshire he attended William Giles School in Chatham when the family moved to Kent.

When John Dickens went to jail for debt, Charles worked in a blacking factory making shoe polish to help pay for the family. His father inherited 450 pounds, which was a lot of money in those days. The debts were paid and he was released.

Charles then became a law clerk, learned shorthand and did freelance journalism. He fell in love with Maria Beadnell whose parents sent her to Paris to get her out of the relationship. As a law and political journalist, he did serialisations in periodicals and his first novel was the Pickwick Papers.   Charles Dickens edited and wrote articles throughout his career. He had a pet raven named Grip which is stuffed and now in Philadelphia.

When he married Catherine Hogarth they honeymooned in Chalk, Kent. They had ten kids. Charles was Anglican and wrote A Christmas Carol as a potboiler. Urania Cottage was for fallen women and he set this up with Coutts. Upon graduation women were required to emigrate.

In 1851 Charles Dickens moved to Tavistock House. He bought Gads Hill in Higham because of its literary connection to Shakespeare and then separated from his wife - though divorce was unthinkable back in those days.

He did a load of charity work for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Kate Dickens and Gladys Storey worked on Dickens and Daughter. Charles was fascinated by the paranormal and an early member of the Ghost Club.

After the Staplehurst Rail Crash which he was involved in, Dickens never recovered and neither did his writing. Charles final words were, “be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art“. His statue is in Philadelphia along with the Raven.

Charles Dickens literary style is unique, with names hinting at the story line. For example, Mr Murdstone is a cold blooded murderer in David Copperfield. Dickensian characters have lived on outside the novels as they have become so well known. Scrooge is a good example.The chapters he wrote were current and responded to public opinion.

Oliver Twist opened political eyes up and was responsible for the clearing of Jacob's Island, a London slum.    Charles Dickens liked to use coincidences and happy endings with good winning over evil. For example, Oliver turns out to be the long lost nephew of an upper class family that rescue him from the pickpockets at the end of the novel.

A Christmas Carol is the most filmed piece and helped revive the family Christmas values lost from the household to the church. Tale of Two Cities is Dickens best selling novel.

Charles Dickens had 6 brothers and sisters and died aged 58 in 1870. William Makepeace Thackeray was Dickens' great rival at the time. He wrote Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero and serialised it in a periodical the same way Charles Dickens did.

Our Mutual Friend was Dickens last full novel and the character Riah (meaning friend in Hebrew) was as good a Jew as Fagin was evil in Oliver Twist. This was an apology for appearing anti-semantic.

Learn more about this author, Alex Storey.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.