Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Charles Dickens Biography

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on England’s southern coast. His father was a clerk in the British Navy pay office, a respectable position, but with little social status. His paternal grandparents, a steward (property manager) and a housekeeper, possessed less status, having been servants, and Dickens later obscured their background. Dickens’s mother came from a more respectable family. Yet two years before Dickens’s birth, his mother’s father was caught embezzling and fled to Europe, never to return. The family’s increasing poverty forced Dickens out of school at age 12 to work in Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, a shoe-polish factory, where the other working boys mocked him as “the young gentleman.” His father was then imprisoned for debt.

After his father’s release from prison, Dickens got a better job as chore boy in law offices. He taught himself shorthand to get an even better job later as a court stenographer and as a reporter in Parliament. At the same time, Dickens, submitted short sketches to obscure magazines.

The first published sketch, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” (later retitled “Mr. Minns and His Cousin”) brought tears to Dickens’s eyes when he discovered it in the pages of The Monthly Magazine in 1833. From then on his sketches, in The Evening Chronicle, earned him a unpretentious reputation. Dickens became a regular visitor at the home of George Hogarth, editor of The Evening Chronicle, and in 1835 became engaged to Hogarth’s daughter Catherine. Publication of the collected Sketches by Boz in 1836 gave Dickens sufficient income to marry Catherine Hogarth that year. The marriage attest unhappy.

Charles Dickens NovelsThe Pickwick Papers 1837

Oliver Twist 1838

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby 1839

The Old Curiosity Shop 1841

Barnaby Rudge A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty 1841

Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit 1844

Dombey and Son 1848

David Copperfield 1850

Bleak House 1853

Hard Times 1854

Little Dorrit 1857

A Tale of Two Cities 1859

Great Expectations 1861

Our Mutual Friend 1865

The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished 1870

Charles Dickens Short Stories1. A Message From the Sea

2. Doctor Marigold

3. George Silverman's Explanation

4. Going Into Society

5. Holiday Romance

6. Hunted Down

7. Mrs Lirriper's Legacy

8. Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings

9. Mugby Junction

10. Somebody's Luggage

11. Some Short Christmas Stories

12. Sunday Under Three Heads

13. The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

14. The Holly Tree Three Branches

15. The Lamplighter

16. The Perils of Certain English Prisoners

17. The Seven Poor Travellers

18. The Wreck of the Golden Mary

19. Tom Tiddler's Ground

Other books and works by Charles Dickens

1. A Child's History of England

2. A Christmas Carol

3. A House to Let

4. American Notes for General Circulation

5. Master Humphrey's Clock

6. Miscellaneous Papers

7. Mudfog and Other Sketches

8. No Thoroughfare

9. Pictures from Italy

10. Reprinted Pieces

11. Sketches by Boz

12. Sketches of Young Couples

13. Sketches of Young Gentlemen

14. Speeches: Literary And Social by Charles Dickens

15. The Battle of Life

16. The Chimes

17. The Cricket on the Hearth

18. The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

19. The Uncommercial Traveller

20. Three Ghost Stories: The Haunted House

21. Three Ghost Stories: The Signal Man

22. Three Ghost Stories: The Trial For Murder

23. To be Read at Dusk

MY FAVORITE BOOKS

1. Oliver Twist

2. David Copperfield

3. A Tale of Two Cities

4. Great Expectations

5. A Christmas Carol

SUMMARY

1. Oliver Twist: Oliver Twist is about a young boy whose mother dies after giving birth to him. He was born in a workhouse where he spends an orphanage life. He later moves to London and get accompanied by other boys.

2. David Copperfield: A young man, David Copperfield tells the story of his youth. He lives happily as a child and gets responsible as he grows up.

3. Great Expectations: Pip, a young orphan lives with his sister and her husband. He later moves to London and befriends a young gentleman.

4. A Tale of Two Cities: Story about England and France that undergoes a period of disruption and chaos. A young woman who has been raised as an orphan learns something strange about her father. She later travels with a longtime Tell son's employee.

5. A Christmas Carol: A person name Scrooge is heartless, showing no feeling for the Christmas. Marley, he sees visions of his past, present and future that inspire him to become a passionately kind and amiable person who sends a turkey to his clerk

THE END

BY: SAIMA IQBAL