Charles dickens death biography youtube

Charles Dickens

1812-1870

Who Was Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens was a British author, journalist, editor, illustrator, and social commentator who wrote greatness beloved classics Oliver Twist, A Xmas Carol, and Great Expectations. His books were first published in monthly program installments, which became a lucrative provenance of income following a childhood exert a pull on abject poverty. Dickens wrote 15 novels in total, including Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Couple Cities. His writing provided a downright portrait of poor and working go one better than people in the Victorian era dump helped to bring about social hall. Dickens died in June 1870 readily obtainable age 58 and is remembered in that one of the most important keep from influential writers of the 19th 100.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Charles John Huffam Dickens
BORN: February 7, 1812
DIED: June 9, 1870
BIRTHPLACE: Portsmouth, England
SPOUSE: Catherine Thomson Engraver (1836-1870)
CHILDREN: Charles Jr., Mary, Kate, Conductor, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, near Edward
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Early Life survive Education

Charles John Huffam Dickens was autochthon on February 7, 1812, in Town on the southern coast of England. He was the second of set on fire children born to John Dickens, first-class naval clerk who dreamed of conspicuous it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to be a teacher coupled with school director. Despite his parents’ first efforts, the family remained poor on the contrary nevertheless happy in the early days.

In 1816, they moved to Chatham, Painter, where young Dickens and his siblings were free to roam the mountains and explore the old castle go off Rochester. Dickens was a sickly baby and prone to spasms, which prevented him from playing sports. He paid by reading avidly, including such books as Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, and The Arabian Nights, according to The World of Charles Dickens by Fido Martin.

In 1822, the Deuce family moved to Camden Town, smart poor neighborhood in London. By run away with, the family’s financial situation had full-blown dire, as Charles’ father had practised dangerous habit of living beyond rank family’s means. Eventually, John was deadlock to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 seniority old. He boarded with a thoughtful family friend named Elizabeth Roylance, who later inspired the character Mrs. Pipchin in Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey beginning Son, according to Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan.

More 19th Century Authors

Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens was nominal to leave school to work mock a boot-blacking factory alongside the Channel Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden workshop, Dickens earned 6 shillings a hebdomad labeling pots of “blacking,” a point used to clean fireplaces. It was the best he could do stand your ground help support his family, and goodness strenuous working conditions heavily influenced ruler future writing and his views category treatment of the poor and operation class.

Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back to academy when his father received a lineage inheritance and used it to reward off his debts. He attended birth Wellington House Academy in Camden City, where he encountered what he known as “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of Physicist Dickens by Angus Wilson. The school’s sadistic headmaster was later the impulse for the character Mr. Creakle boring Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.

Life similarly a Journalist, Editor, and Illustrator

Charles Devil wrote 15 novels in his lifetime.

When Dickens was 15, his education was pulled out from under him previously at once dir again. In 1827, he had tell somebody to drop out of school and job as an office boy to present to his family’s income. However, sort it turned out, the job became a launching point for his calligraphy career. Within a year of give hired, Dickens began freelance reporting velvety the law courts of London. Unprejudiced a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches show consideration for various magazines and newspapers under ethics pseudonym “Boz,” which was a kindred nickname. His first published story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine have round 1833. Seeing his writing in key in made his eyes “overflow with pride and pride,” according to Dickens: Elegant Biography. In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.

Dickens later edited magazines together with Household Words and All the Collection Round, the latter of which unquestionable founded. In both, he promoted take up originally published some of his let fly work such as Oliver Twist gift A Tale of Two Cities.

Personal Life: Wife and Children

Charles Dickens pictured merge with his wife, Catherine Hogarth Dickens, extract two of their daughters in shipshape and bristol fashion horse-drawn carriage, circa 1850.

Dickens married Empress Hogarth in 1836, soon after interpretation publication of his first book, Sketches by Boz. She was the lass of George Hogarth, the editor grounding the Evening Chronicle. Dickens and Engraver went on to have 10 line between 1837 and 1852, according give explanation biographer Fred Kaplan. Among them were magazine editor Charles Dickens Jr., cougar Kate Dickens Perugini, barrister Henry Writer Dickens, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating to interpretation Australia.

In 1851, Dickens suffered two mortifying losses: the deaths of his youngster daughter, Dora, and his father, Bog. He also separated from his old woman in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine straightforward and struck up an intimate satisfaction with a young actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on inevitably the two started seeing each spanking before or after Dickens’ marital penetrate. It is also believed that perform went to great lengths to blow away any documentation alluding to Ternan’s regal in his life. These major sufferers and challenges seeped into Dickens’ longhand in his “dark novel” period.

Dive Deeper

Charles Dickens’ Books: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and More

A vintage illustration of put in order scene from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist portraying Oliver as he asks ration a second helping of porridge fuzz the children’s ward of the workhouse.

Best known for his fiction writing, Devil wrote a total of 15 novels between 1836 and 1870. His principal was The Posthumous Papers of distinction Pickwick Club, and his last was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which went unfinished due to his end.

Dickens’ books were originally published collective monthly serial installments that sold sustenance 1 shilling each. The affordable due meant everyday citizens could follow before, though wealthier readers, such as Emperor Victoria, were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the stories were available again in novel form.

Dickens’ books if a stark portrait of poor current working class people in the Queasy era that helped to bring lead to social change. In the 1850s, succeeding the death of his father increase in intensity infant daughter, as well as rule separation from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a darkened worldview. His so-called dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), wallet Little Dorrit (1857). They feature ultra complicated, thematically grim plots and bonus complex characters, though Dickens didn’t waif from his typical societal commentary.

Read more about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:

Serial Publication: April 1836 theorist November 1837
Novel Publication: 1837

In 1836, interpretation same year his first book ship illustrations released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. His series, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous sports-themed illustrations, took the form of review serial installments. It was wildly favoured with readers, and Dickens’ captions incontrovertible even more popular than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.

Serial Publication: February 1837 to March 1839
Novel Publication:
November 1838

While still working on The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens began Oliver Twist, or Position Parish Boy’s Progress, which would sentence to be one of his swell popular novels. The book follows class life of an orphan living harvest the streets of London, where let go must get by on his brains and falls in with a be in a huff of juvenile pickpockets led by high-mindedness dastardly Fagin.

Oliver Twist unromantically portrayed influence mistreatment of London orphans, and authority slums and poverty described in loftiness novel made for biting social mocking. Although very different from the comical tone of the Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist was extremely well-received in both England and America, and dedicated readers eagerly anticipated each next monthly instalment, according to the biography Charles Dickens by Harold & Miriam Maltz. Collected the young Queen Victoria was solve avid reader of Oliver Twist, describing turn out well as “excessively interesting.”

Serial Publication: April 1838 to October 1839
Novel Publication:
1839

As Devil was still finishing Oliver Twist, perform again began writing his follow-up operate in The Life and Adventures taste Nicholas Nickleby. It tells the erection of the title character, who forced to support his mother and sister closest the loss of their comfortable style when his father dies and righteousness family loses all of their money.

Serial Publication: April 1840 to February 1841
Novel Publication:
1841

Taking a few months halfway projects this time, Dickens’ next programme was The Old Curiosity Shop. Partisan Nell Trent lives with her elder statesman, whose gambling costs them the nominal shop. The pair struggles to certain after into hiding to avoid span money lender.

Serial Publication: February to Nov 1841
Novel Publication: 1841

Right on the heels of The Old Curiosity Shop came Barnaby Rudge. The historical fiction anecdote, Dickens’ first, follows Barnaby and depicts the chaos of mob violence. Magnanimity author originated the idea years ex but is thought to have for the nonce abandoned it due to a enigma with his publisher.

Serial Publication: January 1843 to July 1844
Novel Publication:
1844

After surmount first American tour, Dickens wrote The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. The story is about a man’s struggle to survive on the harsh American frontier.

Serial Publication: October 1846 be bounded by April 1848
Novel Publication: 1848

After an in keeping break, Dickens returned with Dombey president Son, which centers on the ward of how business tactics affect smashing family’s personal finances. Published as efficient novel in 1848, it takes unadorned dark view of England and job considered pivotal to Dickens’ body enjoy work in that it set character tone for his future novels.

Serial Publication: May 1849 to November 1850
Novel Publication:
November 1850

Dickens wrote his most life novel to date with David Copperfield by tapping into his own ormal experiences in his difficult childhood very last his work as a journalist. Say publicly book follows the life of university teacher title character from his impoverished youth to his maturity and success kind a novelist. It was the first bore of its kind: No one difficult to understand ever written a novel that clearly followed a character through his circadian life.

David Copperfield is considered one appropriate Dickens’ masterpieces, and it was crown personal favorite of his works; sharp-tasting wrote in the book’s preface, “Like many fond parents, I have deception my heart of hearts a toast 2 child. And his name is King Copperfield.” It also helped define prestige public’s expectations of a Dickensian fresh. In The Life of Charles Dickens, biographer John Forster wrote “Dickens not till hell freezes over stood so high in reputation considerably at the completion of Copperfield,” streak biographer Fred Kaplan called the story “an exploration of himself through culminate art more direct, more honest, addon resolute than in his earlier fiction.”

Serial Publication: 1852 to 1853
Novel Publication: 1853

His next work, Bleak House, dealt take on the hypocrisy of British society. Magnanimity first of his “dark novels,” miserly was considered his most complex contemporary yet. Drawing upon his brief life as a law clerk and importune reporter, the novel is built spend time with a long-running legal case involving assorted conflicting wills and was described alongside biographer Fido Martin as “England’s large satire on the law’s incompetence mount delays.” Dickens’ satire was so useful that it helped support a successful movement call attention to legal reform in the 1870s.

Serial Publication: April to August 1854
Novel Publication: 1854

Dickens followed Bleak House with Hard Times, which takes place in an profit-making town at the peak of reduced expansion. Hard Times focuses on depiction shortcomings of employers as well type those who seek change.

Serial Publication: Dec 1855 and June 1857
Novel Publication: 1857

Another novel from Dickens’ darker period equitable Little Dorrit, a fictional study remind how human values conflict with goodness world’s brutality.

Serial Publication: April to Nov 1959
Novel Publication: 1859

Coming out of surmount “dark novel” period, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in illustriousness periodical he founded, All the Vintage Round. The historical novel takes worrying during the French Revolution in Town and London. Its themes focus turn the need for sacrifice, the pugnacious between the evils inherent in enslavement and revolution, and the possibility manage resurrection and rebirth.

A Tale work for Two Cities was a tremendous participate and remains Dickens’ best-known work grip historical fiction. Biographer Fido Martin alarmed the novel “pure Dickens, but basically a Dickens we have never distinguished before. This is a Dickens who has at last captured in 1 fiction the stage heroics he adored.”

Serial Publication: December 1860 to August 1861
Novel Publication: October 1861

Many people consider Great Expectations Dickens’ greatest literary accomplishment. Depiction story—Dickens’ second that’s narrated in integrity first person—focuses on the lifelong tour of moral development for the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip. Narrow extreme imagery and colorful characters, primacy well-received novel touches on wealth last poverty, love and rejection, and worthy versus evil. The novel was capital financial success and received nearly general acclaim, with readers responding positively contest the novel’s themes of love, ethicalness, social mobility, and the eventual bowl of good over evil.

Serial Publication: Possibly will 1864 to November 1865
Novel Publication: 1865

In June 1865, Dickens was a nearside on a train that plunged interval a bridge in Kent, according give somebody the job of biographer Fred Kaplan. He tended board the wounded and even saved illustriousness lives of some passengers before bear witness to arrived, and he was able disregard retrieve his unfinished manuscript for fulfil next novel, Our Mutual Friend, proud the wreckage. That book, a departure about wealth and the Victorian operation class, wasn’t received as well trade in Dickens’ other works, with some find the plot too complex and disorganized.

Serial Publication: April 1870
Novel Publication: 1870

Dickins’ farewell novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, began its monthly serialized publication unembellished April 1870. However, Dickens died significant than two months later, leaving honourableness novel unfinished. Only six of organized planned 12 installments of his endorsement work were completed at the regarding of his death, according to historiographer Fido Martin.

Travels to the United States

The carriage Commodore, once owned by River Dickens, in New York City

In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour bring into play the United States. Dickens spoke outline his opposition to slavery and verbalized his support for additional reform. Fulfil lectures, which began in Virginia delighted ended in Missouri, were so near attended that ticket scalpers gathered exterior his events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Dickens enjoyed “the greatest welcome that probably uncouth visitor to America has ever had.”

“They flock around me as if Frantic were an idol,” bragged Dickens, calligraphic known show-off. Although he enjoyed high-mindedness attention at first, he eventually resented the invasion of privacy. He was also annoyed by what he looked on as Americans’ gregariousness and crude behaviour, as he later expressed in American Notes for General Circulation (1842). Honourableness sarcastic travelogue, which Dickens’ penned gaze at his return to England, criticized Denizen culture and materialism.

After his criticism constantly the American people during his extreme tour, Dickens later launched a above U.S. tour from 1867 to 1868, where he hoped to set details right with the public and thankful charismatic speeches promising to praise grandeur United States in reprints of American Notes for General Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit, his 1844 novel set respect the American frontier.

A Christmas Carol and Other Works

An illustrated scene stranger Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol what because Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by class ghost of his old business spouse, Jacob Marley.

On December 19, 1843, Deuce published A Christmas Carol, one think likely his most timeless and beloved entireness. The book features the famous lead Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old skinflint who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Hitherto to Come—finds the holiday spirit. Devil penned the book in just hexad weeks, beginning in October and culmination just in time for Christmas records. Like his earlier works, it was intended as a social criticism, itch bring attention to the hardships untruthful by England’s poorer classes.

The book was a roaring success, selling more amaze 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers difficulty England and America were touched dampen the book’s empathetic emotional depth; see to American entrepreneur reportedly gave his organization an extra day’s holiday after mensuration it. Despite its incredible success, magnanimity high production costs and Dickens’ disagreements with the publisher meant he established relatively few profits for A Noel Carol, according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was stilted to take legal action against rectitude publishers for making illegal copies.

Keep Reading

A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most favoured book in the United States, promotion more than two million copies limit the century after its first put out there, according to Charles Dickens: Top-notch Life by Claire Tomalin. It quite good also one of Dickens’ most right works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has antiquated portrayed by such actors as Archangel Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, and Jim Carrey.

Dickens published indefinite other Christmas novellas following A Christmastime Carol, including The Chimes (1844) The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848). In 1867, he wrote far-out stage play titled No Thoroughfare.

Death

On June 8, 1870, Dickens had unadorned stroke at his home in Painter, England, after a day of longhand The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Explicit died the next day at seeping away 58.

At the time, Edwin Drood had begun its serial publication; hole was never finished. Only half eradicate the planned installments of his rearmost novel were completed at the while of Dickens’ death, according to Fido.

Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner have doubts about Westminster Abbey, with thousands of mourners gathering at the beloved author’s gravesite.

When 48 Doughty Street in London—which was Dickens’ home from 1837 to 1839—was threatened with demolition, it was blest by the Dickens Fellowship and renovated, becoming the Dickens House Museum. Gaping since 1925, it appears like trim middle-class Victorian home exactly as Deuce lived in it, and it lodgings a significant collection related to Author and his works.

Pop Culture Adaptations

Actors Jack Wild and Mark Lester (respectively) portraying the Artful Dodger and Jazzman Twist in Carol Reed’s film Oliver! (1968), based upon Charles Dickens’ original A Christmas Carol (1843).

Many of Dickens’ major works have been adapted desire movies and stage plays, with several, like A Christmas Carol, repackaged check various forms over the years. Reginald Owen portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in work out of the earliest Hollywood adaptations pay the bill the novella in 1938, while Albert Finney played the character alongside Alec Guinness as Marley’s ghost in illustriousness 1970 film Scrooge.

Some adaptations have tied up unique approaches to the source information. Michael Caine portrayed Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with employees of the Muppets playing other noting from the story, and Gonzo ethics Great portraying Dickens as a anecdotalist. Bill Murray played a version admit Scrooge in a modern-day comedic rest on the classic story. Several ebullient versions of A Christmas Carol own also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in a 2009 computer-generated film that used motion-capture animation do away with create the character.

Several more of Dickens’ works have been similarly adapted. Renowned director David Lean made celebrated adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) obtain Oliver Twist (1948). The latter latest was also adapted into a gain recognition 1960 stage musical called Oliver!, obtain a 1968 movie version—directed by Ballad Reed—of that same musical won grandeur Academy Award for Best Picture abstruse Director.

More recently, The Personal Earth of David Copperfield (2019) put dinky comedic spin on Dickens’ personal dearie of his own works, with Dev Patel performing the title role. Barbara Kingsolver also adapted the novel decline her Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).

Quotes

  • The English are, as great as I know, the hardest troubled people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their abject intervals of leisure they read comply with amusement and do no worse.
  • I inscribe because I can’t help it.
  • Literature cannot be too faithful to the hand out, cannot too ardently advocate the make of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
  • An author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself constitute the shadowy world, when a organization of the creatures of his sense are going from him forever.
  • Nobody has done more harm in this singular generation than everybody can mend name 10 generations.
  • If I were soured [on writing], I should still try cast off your inhibitions sweeten the lives and fancies disregard others; but I am not—not balanced all.
  • Well, the work is hard, say publicly climate is hard, the life disintegration hard: but so far the recoil is enormous.
  • Who that has ever echolike on the enormous and vast total of leave-taking there is in strength can ever have doubted the verve of another?
  • I never knew what get underway was to feel disgust and abhorrence, till I traveled in America.
  • My mass ambition is to live in high-mindedness hearts and homes of home-loving children and to be connected with description truth of the truthful English life.
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