Charles Dickens (1812–70) was one of England’s greatest novelists. This quintessential Victorian author is recognized primarily for his epic stories, vivid characters, and thorough portrayal of contemporary life.
Dickens’s story is one of the rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth. His schooling was brief because his father was imprisoned for bad debt. In the custom of the time, the whole family, except for Charles, was sent to prison along with their patriarch. Two days after his 12th birthday, Dickens was sent to work as a boy-apprentice in a blacking factory, pasting labels on pots of dye for 12 hours a day in a rat-infested warehouse. After four months, he was rescued by his father and allowed to resume his education. The humiliating stigma and the appalling conditions, as well as loneliness and despair, became fictionalized in two of Dickens’s better-known novels David Copperfield (1849–50) and Great Expectations (1860–61.)
Critical estimation of Dickens’s literary career commonly splits his novels into two sets: the early novels, from his début with The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) to David Copperfield, and his later novels, beginning with Bleak House (1853.) Admirers of all that is commonly meant by the term Dickensian—the novelist’s irrepressible verve and his inexhaustible supply of eccentrics, comic situations, emotions, and humor—locate Dickens’s greatness in his first period.
Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843,) remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist (1837–39) and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction.
Dickens managed a full social and personal life while working at a frenzied pace. As well as a massive list of novels he published an autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organizations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays, and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His later career was marked by domestic unhappiness, in which he separated from his wife and had an affair with Ellen Teman, an actress 20 years his junior. He died of a stroke in 1870 and is buried at Westminster Abbey.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Dickens
A man in public life expects to be sneered at—it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.
—Charles Dickens
And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done under that sky there, every day.
—Charles Dickens
Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.
—Charles Dickens
Charity begins at home and justice begins next door.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Justice, Charity
Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Business
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
—Charles Dickens
If the law supposes that, said Mr. Bumble, the law is a assa idiot. If thats the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experienceby experience.
—Charles Dickens
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
—Charles Dickens
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Change, Nature
An idea, like a ghost, according to the common notion of ghosts, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Ideas
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Truth
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Gratitude, The Present, Blessings
I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Mothers, Mother
Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than that you should.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Failure
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Christmas
Its very strange, said Mr. Dick that I never can get that quite right; I never can make that perfectly clear.
—Charles Dickens
A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.
—Charles Dickens
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