By Fatima Aamer Mustafa Class VIII lilac

1. Charles Dickens By Fatima Aamer Mustafa Class VIII lilac

2. Who is Charles Dickens? Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens's works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.

3. His Life He was born on 7 February 1812. When he was born he found himself in Part sea. His mother’s name was Elizabeth; she came from a family of musical instrument makers. His father was called John. He worked for navy. One of his most important things was that his family never stayed very long in the same house. Five months after he was born, they moved from that street to another in same town. In 1822, at the age of 21, he wrote a small piece called “a dinner at poplar walk’. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of his employer. He died on 9 June 1870. He was buried in poet’s corner in London’s Westminster abbey, a final resting place for best-known and best-loved. When he died his age was 58.

4. His early years He was the second of eight children to John Dickens (1785-1851) and Elizabeth Dickens (1789-1863).  Very soon after his birth the family moved to Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then, when he was four, to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early years seem to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy. Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, especially the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding.

5. Middle years In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tailstock House where he wrote Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorr it (1857).[ It was here he indulged in the amateur theatricals which are described in Forster's "Life". In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place in Hingham, Kent. As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him.

6. …..In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his protégé Willkie Collins had written. Dickens fell deeply in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Tern an, which was to last the rest of his life. Dickens was 45 and Tern an 18 when he made the decision, which went strongly against Victorian convention, to separate from his wife, Catherine, in 1858—divorce was still unthinkable for someone as famous as he was. When Catherine left, never to see her husband again, she took with her one child, leaving the other children to be raised by her sister Georgina who chose to stay at Gad's Hill.

7. His father His father John Dickens (21 August 1785 – 31 March 1851) was the father of English novelist Charles Dickens and was the model for Mr. Macabre in his son's semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield. The son of William Dickens (1719–1785) and Elizabeth Ball (1745–1824), John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth in Hampshire. On 13 June 1809 at St Mary le Strand, London, he married Elizabeth Barrow, with whom he had eight children. He was later transferred to London and then to Chatham, returning to live in Camden Town in London in 1822 to work in Somerset House. John Dickens found it difficult to provide for his growing family on his meager income. Soon his debts had become so severe that all the household goods were sold in an attempt to pay his bills.

8. His mother Elizabeth Clifford aspired to be a teacher and school director, (21 December 1789 – 13 September 1863) was the wife of John Dickens and the mother of English novelist Charles Dickens. She was the source for Mrs. Nickleby in her son's novel Nicholas Nickleby and for Mrs. Macabre in David Copperfield. She came from family musical instrument makers.

9. His family The Dickens family is the descendants of John Dickens, the father of the English novelist Charles Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office and had eight children from his marriage to Elizabeth Barrow. Their second child was Charles Dickens, whose descendents include the novelist Monica Dickens, the writer Lucinda Dickens Hawksley and the actors Harry Lloyd and Brian Forster.

10. His books Dickens’ greatest novel. Number 1: Bleak House Bleak House is the great writer’s grandest, most virtuosic achievement.Dickens’ greatest novel. Number 2: Great Expectations  The older Dickens got, the darker his books. With Great Expectations, he asks: How long can a society ignore the nefarious, corrupt or compromised sources of its wealth?Dickens’ greatest novel. Number 3: David Copperfield Every time I read the book I think, the story of a boy who overcomes adversity and grows up to be a writer? That’s the most cliché first-novel idea around. Except that it was Dickens’ eighth, and it marked a departure.

11. …Dickens’ greatest novel. Number 4: Hard Times Dickens’ shortest novel is very taut, and occasionally some sharp little passage arrives that reminds you of his more expansive greatness. Dickens’ greatest novel. Number 9: Dombey and Son When the death scene in Dombey and Son was published, all of England was apparently prostrated by grief.

12. His death The last novel Dickens completed before his death was Our Mutual Friend, which was finished in 1865. He started work on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a mystery novel intended to run in twelve parts. Halfway through, however, Dickens suffered a stroke. He died at his London home on 9 June 1870, at age 58, and was buried in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey. Just prior to his death, Dickens had recently performed an emotional reading of the murder of Nancy in the character of Oliver Twist's Bill Sikes. Friends believed that the strain of this reading brought on his stroke and killed him. We have no way of knowing all the secrets of Dickens's life, but we know this: up until the very end, he gave everything he had to his work.

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