Dickens, Charles (John Huffam)

born Feb. 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, Eng.

died June 9, 1870, Gad's Hill, near Chatham, Kent

British novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period.

When Dickens's father, a clerk, was thrown into debtors prison, the boy was withdrawn from school and forced to work in a factory. As a young man he worked as a reporter. His fiction career began with short pieces reprinted as Sketches by "Boz" (1836). The comic novel The Pickwick Papers (1837) made him the most popular English author of his time. Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), and Barnaby Rudge (1841) followed. After a trip to America, he wrote A Christmas Carol (1843) in a few weeks, followed by Martin Chuzzlewit (1844). With Dombey and Son (1848), his novels began to express a heightened uneasiness about the evils of Victorian industrial society, which intensified in the semiautobiographical David Copperfield (1850), as well as Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). A Tale of Two Cities (1859) appeared in the period when he achieved great popularity for his public readings. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) was left unfinished. Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils and inadequate institutions, an encyclopaedic knowledge of London, pathos, a vein of the macabre, a pervasive spirit of benevolence and geniality, inexhaustible powers of character creation, an acute ear for characteristic speech, and a highly individual and inventive prose style.

* * *