Charles "David Copperfield" Dickens
(1812 - 1870)
Charles John Huffam1 Dickens was born 7 February 1812, second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens. The family would eventually number seven children, plus a son who died in infancy, and since neither parent seemed able to economize, things were generally very hard financially for the family. Charles attended school for a time in Kent, where the happiest days of his childhood were spent, but when the family moved to London in 1822, Charles was simply never re-enrolled in school, and was left to wander London largely unattended2. When the oldest child, Fanny, was sent to the Royal Academy of Music for training as a pianist, Charles, then 12, was deemed old enough to work to help pay the family expenses. So, for six months, he worked in a factory pasting labels onto containers of shoe polish. While there, John Dickens was thrown into debtor's prison, and released a few months later under the Insolvency Act3.
It was a feud between John Dickens and the factory owner that eventually got Charles out of the factory and back in school, though Elizabeth tried her best to make him go back, which Charles never quite forgave her for. The factory experience will show up again and again in Charles' novels, and it also left him with something of a phobia about being dirty. In 1827, Charles left school again, more voluntarily this time, and took work as a law clerk, and then a parliamentary reporter. Though he also toyed with the idea of taking the stage (he loved amateur theatricals all his life), he eventually starts writing sketches for two of the London newspapers4, publishing them under the name 'Boz'.
In 1835, now quite well-established in his sketch-writing, Charles proposed to Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth, who had been advisor to Sir Walter Scott. They married in April of 18365, and the sweet-tempered Catherine generally allowed Charles to take charge of everything, including even the eventual naming of their children. That same year, Charles's began writing The Pickwick Papers, and suddenly he was famous. Imitations of Pickwick appeared everywhere.
The now firmly upper-middle-class Charles still has many family problems, however. His father is still in debt more often than not, even going so far as to try to borrow money using his son's name, and Charles ends up paying most of John's debts.
The warehouse work at age 12, the humiliating shadow of prison and family debt, questions of money and social rank, and topical issues of law and reform preoccupied him in early life - but they rankled and haunted him through his later years as well, and are present in various forms in all of his writings. In all of these fictional imaginings, drawn from the turmoil of his own life, the reader senses Dickens' compassion for the less fortunate and his desire to find real meaning and substance behind an individual's worth favoured by society, wealth, class, power, and education. Charles Dickens was born in 1812, in Portsmouth, England. He spent his formative years in London, and began his schooling at age nine. In 1824, his father, John, suffered financial difficulties and was stripped of his house by creditors.
Charles grew up in a wealthy family and had everything pretty much going for him. He was always full of curiosity coming up, always wanted to know how different things worked, and would try different experiments. "Charles always tried various experiments. One of these, after he'd read the New Testament account of Jesus walking on water, was an attempt to walk on water. He didn't use faith or magic, but science, with the help of a mechanical device he made out of two planks held together with hinges." (Josepha Sherman, page 16) Aside from the wealth they had poor health, in London there was pollution everywhere and all kinds of toxicants in the air. This caused Charles siblings after him to die before they reached to age of one. "Even so, the air wouldn't have been to clean, thanks to carelessly tossed garbage, horses in the street, and poor sewer...The Babbage’s decided that the wisest thing to do was send Charles away from London, out into the cleaner countryside." (Josepha Sherman, page 14) At the age of
Charles Dickens born February 7th 1812 – 9th June 1870 is a highly remarkable novelist who had a vision to change wealthy people’s scrutiny on the underprivileged and by fulfilling the dream he writes novels. Furthermore, I think that Dickens wrote about poverty as he had experiences this awful incident in his upbringings.
“Charles Dickens preferred workers the way he preferred Victorian women: grateful for favors received, humble, patient, and passive.” (Scheckner) Charles Dickens entered this world on February 7, 1812; he was born in Lindsport, Portsmouth, England. The time period in which he lived and the location in which he dwelled are both important because they had a great effect on his writing. His works were very gender-biased, full of symbolism and irony, and reflected the social structure of his time/place he lived.
Charles Dickens is a famous novelist who was born on February 7TH 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had been serialized and to also show Dickens purposes, which was to show the powerful links between poverty and crime. The novel is based on a young boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how the underprivileged misunderstood orphan, Oliver the son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is generally quiet and shy rather than being aggressive, after his parents past away he is forced to work in a workhouse and then forced to work with criminals. The novel reveals a lot of different aspects of poverty, crime and cruelty which Dickens had experienced himself as a young boy in his disturbing and unsupportive childhood, due to his parents sent to prison so therefore Charles, who was already filled with misery, melancholy and deprivation had started working at the age of twelve at a factory to repay their debt.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American writer was the child of Elizabeth Clarke Manning and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. He is a descendent of a long line of Puritan ancestors which of one is his great-grandfather John Hathorne who was a judge in the Salem witch trials. He was not proud of his family’s background and in order to disassociate himself with them he added a “w” to his last name to make it Hawthorne.
Charles Dickens, an English writer and social critic, lived in England from 1812 to 1870 (Cody). Dickens usually critiques topics important to him or those that have affected him throughout his life. He grew up poor and was forced to work at an early age when his father was thrown into debtors prison (Cody). As he became a popular and widely known author he was an outspoken activist for the betterment of poor people’s lives (Davis). He wrote A Tale of Two Cities during the 1850s and published the book in 185...
Charles Dickens, born February 7th, 1812 in Portsmouth, England was one of eight children. He was unfortunately born into a low social class and in the English society that often meant you were the rag dolls for the rest of the country. Although his father didn’t solicit an abundance of money he spent it as if he did. They lived entertaining lives but as a result of their frequent spending they...
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, at Portsea on the Southern coast of England. To John and Elizabeth Dickens, Dickens was the second eldest of eight children. The Dickens family were on fragile financial ground from the very start.
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. The second of eight children born into an incredibly poor family, Charles led an extremely oppressed childhood. After his father was sent to a debtor’s prison, Charles went to work at the age of twelve to assist his family in paying off their debt. The same
The novel, Great Expectations, presents the story of a young boy growing up and becoming a
"The Victorians were avowedly, unashamedly, incorrigibly moralists. They . . . engaged in philanthropic enterprises in part to satisfy their own moral needs. And they were moralists in behalf of the poor, whom they sought not only to assist materially but also to elevate morally, spiritually, culturally, and intellectually . . . ." (Himmelfarb 48(8)). Charles Dickens used characterization as the basis of his pursuit of this moral goal in the serialized Oliver Twist. His satyr was meant to draw parallels to the dark side of an era of British progress. One side of progress is wealth, the other side of the same coin is poverty, despair, misery and crime. Dickens allegorized evil in contrast to good through characterization and melodrama. "Most of the moral judgments of the reader are pre-made for him or her. As a result, the reader objectively absorbs the moral lessons Dickens has set forth" (Stoddard).
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England. He was the second of eight children, and his father, John drove them into poverty. John was sent to prison for debt in 1824 when Dickens was twelve years of age. Dickens worked in an unsanitary boot-blacking factory to provide money to his family, leaving school entirely. Although he started earning a fair amount of money at his factory job, he strived for educational
Once Dickens’s father was released from prison, Dickens returned back to school. He then became a law clerk, then a court reporter, and then finally a hugely successful novelist.
Charles Dickens was born on 1812 in a mid-class family at Landport in Portsea Island. His father John Dickens was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office with a comfortable income. But his squandering quickly destroys the family by the accumulation of the debts which he could not pay and went to jail in the end. Dickens was also forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, where he earned six shillings per week for pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The terrible working conditions in the blacking company left a strong impact on young Dickens and later became his inspiration of writing and depicting the miserable life of the lower class people in London, especially the character of Oliver Twist.