AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Charles John Huffed Dickens was born in Hampshire, England,

on 7th February 1812. He died on 4 the June 1870 ( Aged 58).
Dickens left the school to work in a factory when his father was
in prison. But he wrote fifteen novels, hundreds of shorts stories
and non-fiction articles and lectured and performed extensively.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer, generally

considered to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and
responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels
and characters. When he was only 12 years old, his father went
to prison because of financial problems and his family moved to
Kent in London. Dickens left the school and went to work in a
factory. In 1813 he became a newspaper reporter. Soon he
started writing short stories for magazines.
Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in April 1836.They had
ten children and he divorced in 1858. In 1858 he undertook
a tour of the UK and Ireland, where he read excerpts from
his work publicly. After acquiring the house where he spent
his childhood, Gad’s Hill Place, in 1856, soon became their
permanent residence.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke in his
house, after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never
regained consciousness, and the next day, on 9 June, five
years to the day after the Staple hurst rail crash (9 June
1865), he died in Gad's Hill Place. 
BEGINNING OF A LITERARY
CAREER
Much drawn to the theatre, Dickens nearly became a
professional actor in 1832. In 1833 he began contributing
stories and descriptive essays to magazines and
newspapers; these attracted attention and were reprinted
as sketches by Boz” (February 1836).

The same month, he was invited to provide a

comic serial narrative to accompany engravings by a well-
known artist; seven weeks later the first instalment of The
Pickwick Paper appeared. Within a few
months Pickwick was the rage and Dickens the most
popular author of the day.
During 1836 he also wrote two plays and a pamphlet on a
topical issue (how the poor should be allowed to enjoy the
Sabbath) and, resigning from his newspaper job, undertook to
edit a monthly magazine, Bentley’s Miscellany, in which he
serialized  Oliver Twist (1837–39).
Thus, he had two serial instalments to write every month.
Already the first of his nine surviving children had been born;
he had married (in April 1836) Catherine, eldest daughter of a
respected Scottish journalist and man of letters, George
Hogarth
 IMPORTANT WORKS
In 1837 a form of serial publication became a standard method of
writing and producing fiction in the Victorian period. In the same
year he was an editor of Bentley's Miscellany magazine and then
he started his new novel “Oliver Twist’”
In 1842 Dickens was as popular in America as he was in England,
went on a five-month lecture tour of the United States, speaking
out strongly against slavery and in support of other reforms. On his
return he wrote American Notes, a book that criticizes American
life as being culturally backward and materialistic.
His next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–1844), describes the hero
finding that survival on the American frontier is more difficult than
making his way in England. During the years in which Chuzzlewit
appeared, Dickens also published two Christmas stories, A
Christmas Carol and The Chimes. 
Major Works
• Sketches by Boz (1836)
• Pickwick Papers (serialized monthly 1836-37)
• Oliver Twist (serialized monthly 1837-39)
• Nicholas Nickleby(serialized monthly 1838-39)
• The Old Curiosity (serialized weekly 1840-41)
• Barnaby Rudge (serialized weekly 1841)
• Martin Chuzzlewit(serialized monthly 1843-44)
• Dombey and  (serialized monthly 1846-48)
• David Copperfield (serialized monthly 1849-50)
• Bleak House (serialized monthly 1852-53)
• Hard Times (serialized weekly 1854)
• Little Dorita(serialized monthly 1855-57)
• A Tale of Two Cities (serialized weekly 1859)
• Great Expectation(serialized weekly 1860-61)
• Our Mutual Friend(serialized monthly 1864-65)
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood-(serialized
monthly1870)
FIRST MAJOR NOVEL
After a year abroad in Italy and writing Pictures from Italy
(1846), Dickens published instalments of Dombey and
Son, which continued till 1848. Dickens's next novel,
David Copperfield (1849–1850), is the first complete
record of the typical course of a young man's life in
Victorian England. This autobiographical novel
fictionalized elements of Dickens's childhood, his pursuit
of a journalism career, and his love life. Though
Copperfield is not Dickens's greatest novel, it was his
personal favourite.
In 1850 Dickens began a new magazine, Household
Words. His editorials and articles touched upon English
politics, social institutions, and family life.In Dickens's
biography, Life of Charles Dickens (1872), John
Forster wrote of David Copperfield, "underneath the
fiction lay something of the author's life”.It was Dickens's
personal favourite among his own novels, as he wrote in
the author's preface to the 1867 edition of the novel.
HIS LATER WORK 
In 1859 his London readings continued, and he began a new weekly, All
the Year Round. The first instalment of A Tale of Two Cities appeared
in the opening number, and the novel continued through November. In
1863, he did public readings both in Paris and London. “Our Mutual
Friend” was begun in 1864, appeared monthly until November 1865. In
the same year, Dickens was in poor health, due largely to consistent
overwork.
In 1865, an incident occurred which disturbed Dickens greatly, both
psychologically and physically. Perhaps he believes that life is itself a
mixture of joy and grief. Life is delightful because it is at once comic
and tragic. He is a humourist. Whether he exaggerates a person's
physical traits to achieve a dramatic effect or to ridicule his personal
defects, to be light-heartedly jocular or bitterly satirical, he is sure to
produce roaring laughter or understanding smiles.
Finally, Charles Dickens was one of the best writers in the world. His
stories are very good and famous and funny too. In my opinion, he was
a very good writer.
LEGACY
Dickens’s legacy has been equally contradictory, as he
has been appropriated by vastly different
constituencies for vastly different purposes.

The Dickens Fellowship, founded in 1901, has

members who come for the Dickensian Rambles
through London, for the sense of warm fellowship
generated. It also has its share of top-class academics
applying critical theory to the works, which open to
Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist, post-colonial and
many other readings.
There is also, increasingly in evidence, a Global Dickens: in
the British colonies Dickens’s fourteen novels may have been
seen as on the side of colonial authority, but in the countries
colonised by the French, German, Dutch or Belgians he was
read by the colonised people as someone who was ‘on their
side’, a voice for the down-trodden, an enemy of authority, a
fellow-freedom-fighter.

This is particularly true of places like Algeria, where Dickens

has been for decades a firm fixture on the educational
syllabus.