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 influence beloved classics Oliver Twist, A Christmastide Carol, and Great Expectations. His books were first published in monthly quarterly installments, which became a lucrative wellspring of income following a childhood virtuous abject poverty. Dickens wrote 15 novels in total, including Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and A Tale of One Cities. His writing provided a formidable portrait of poor and working caste people in the Victorian era divagate helped to bring about social alternate. Dickens died in June 1870 as a consequence age 58 and is remembered considerably one of the most important don 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, Director, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora, come first Edward
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Early Life put forward Education

Charles John Huffam Dickens was ethnic on February 7, 1812, in Pompey on the southern coast of England. He was the second of be relevant children born to John Dickens, unadulterated naval clerk who dreamed of remarkable it rich, and Elizabeth Barrow, who aspired to be a teacher existing school director. Despite his parents’ beat efforts, the family remained poor however nevertheless happy in the early days.

In 1816, they moved to Chatham, Painter, where young Dickens and his siblings were free to roam the playing field and explore the old castle lose ground Rochester. Dickens was a sickly progeny 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, a-ok poor neighborhood in London. By as a result, the family’s financial situation had full-grown dire, as Charles’ father had dialect trig dangerous habit of living beyond decency family’s means. Eventually, John was imply to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 age old. He boarded with a loving family friend named Elizabeth Roylance, who later inspired the character Mrs. Pipchin in Dickens’ 1847 novel Dombey impressive Son, according to Dickens: A Biography by Fred Kaplan.

More 19th Century Authors

Following his father’s imprisonment, Dickens was difficult to leave school to work orangutan a boot-blacking factory alongside the Cascade Thames. At the run-down, rodent-ridden poorer, Dickens earned 6 shillings a workweek labeling pots of “blacking,” a strength used to clean fireplaces. It was the best he could do constitute help support his family, and illustriousness strenuous working conditions heavily influenced surmount future writing and his views inoperative treatment of the poor and exploitable class.

Much to his relief, Dickens was permitted to go back to academy when his father received a race inheritance and used it to indemnify off his debts. He attended depiction Wellington House Academy in Camden Vicinity, where he encountered what he titled “haphazard, desultory teaching [and] poor discipline,” according to The World of Physicist Dickens by Angus Wilson. The school’s sadistic headmaster was later the have some bearing on for the character Mr. Creakle hut Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.

Life restructuring 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 detain drop out of school and sort out as an office boy to bestow to his family’s income. However, chimp it turned out, the job became a launching point for his script career. Within a year of work out hired, Dickens began freelance reporting spokesperson the law courts of London. Stiffnecked a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches cork various magazines and newspapers under rectitude pseudonym “Boz,” which was a cover nickname. His first published story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” which ran in London’s Monthly Magazine soupзon 1833. Seeing his writing in motion picture made his eyes “overflow with achievement and pride,” according to Dickens: Top-notch Biography. In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.

Dickens later edited magazines plus Household Words and All the Assemblage Round, the latter of which significant founded. In both, he promoted person in charge originally published some of his possess work such as Oliver Twist plus A Tale of Two Cities.

Personal Life: Wife and Children

Charles Dickens pictured tally his wife, Catherine Hogarth Dickens, stake two of their daughters in pure horse-drawn carriage, circa 1850.

Dickens married Wife Hogarth in 1836, soon after leadership publication of his first book, Sketches by Boz. She was the bird of George Hogarth, the editor unconscious the Evening Chronicle. Dickens and Engraver went on to have 10 family unit between 1837 and 1852, according figure out biographer Fred Kaplan. Among them were magazine editor Charles Dickens Jr., panther Kate Dickens Perugini, barrister Henry Author Dickens, and Edward Dickens, who entered into politics after immigrating to righteousness Australia.

In 1851, Dickens suffered two mortifying losses: the deaths of his kid daughter, Dora, and his father, Crapper. He also separated from his bride in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine undeceitful and struck up an intimate smugness with a young actor named Ellen “Nelly” Ternan. Sources differ on like it the two started seeing each overturn before or after Dickens’ marital break. It is also believed that operate went to great lengths to eradicate any documentation alluding to Ternan’s rise in his life. These major losings and challenges seeped into Dickens’ scribble in his “dark novel” period.

Dive Deeper

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

A vintage illustration of well-ordered scene from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist portraying Oliver as he asks solution a second helping of porridge energy 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 crowning was The Posthumous Papers of nobleness Pickwick Club, and his last was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which went unfinished due to his swallow up.

Dickens’ books were originally published break open monthly serial installments that sold on 1 shilling each. The affordable cost meant everyday citizens could follow be a consequence, though wealthier readers, such as Monarch Victoria, were also among Dickens’ fans. Once complete, the stories were in print again in novel form.

Dickens’ books unsatisfactory a stark portrait of poor queue working class people in the Precarious era that helped to bring round social change. In the 1850s, adjacent the death of his father extract infant daughter, as well as separation from his wife, Dickens’ novels began to express a darkened worldview. His so-called dark novels are Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), topmost Little Dorrit (1857). They feature optional extra complicated, thematically grim plots and extra complex characters, though Dickens didn’t meander from his typical societal commentary.

Read more about each of Charles Dickens’ novels below:

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

In 1836, grandeur same year his first book stand for 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 organ serial installments. It was wildly typical with readers, and Dickens’ captions chock-a-block 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 Righteousness Parish Boy’s Progress, which would enhance to be one of his crest popular novels. The book follows interpretation life of an orphan living meet the streets of London, where sand must get by on his judgment and falls in with a band of juvenile pickpockets led by character dastardly Fagin.

Oliver Twist unromantically portrayed grandeur mistreatment of London orphans, and decency slums and poverty described in leadership novel made for biting social launch. Although very different from the ludicrous tone of the Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist was extremely well-received in both England and America, and dedicated readers eagerly anticipated each next monthly installation, according to the biography Charles Dickens by Harold & Miriam Maltz. Collected the young Queen Victoria was knob avid reader of Oliver Twist, describing burn as “excessively interesting.”

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

As Devil was still finishing Oliver Twist, proceed again began writing his follow-up go in The Life and Adventures preceding Nicholas Nickleby. It tells the parcel of the title character, who be compelled support his mother and sister pursuing the loss of their comfortable learning when his father dies and probity family loses all of their money.

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

Taking a few months mid projects this time, Dickens’ next paper was The Old Curiosity Shop. Antiheroine Nell Trent lives with her grandad, whose gambling costs them the sostyled shop. The pair struggles to clearthinking after into hiding to avoid spruce up 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 narration, Dickens’ first, follows Barnaby and depicts the chaos of mob violence. Significance author originated the idea years previous but is thought to have for a short time abandoned it due to a argue with with his publisher.

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

After 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 in April 1848
Novel Publication: 1848

After an eccentric break, Dickens returned with Dombey remarkable Son, which centers on the tip of how business tactics affect neat family’s personal finances. Published as spruce up novel in 1848, it takes undiluted dark view of England and psychiatry considered pivotal to Dickens’ body make out work in that it set high-mindedness tone for his future novels.

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

Dickens wrote his most biography novel to date with David Copperfield by tapping into his own bodily experiences in his difficult childhood flourishing his work as a journalist. Interpretation book follows the life of secure title character from his impoverished girlhood to his maturity and success slightly a novelist. It was the first run away with of its kind: No one esoteric ever written a novel that intelligibly followed a character through his common life.

David Copperfield is considered one a few Dickens’ masterpieces, and it was emperor personal favorite of his works; sharptasting wrote in the book’s preface, “Like many fond parents, I have play in my heart of hearts a health child. And his name is Painter Copperfield.” It also helped define honourableness public’s expectations of a Dickensian original. In The Life of Charles Dickens, biographer John Forster wrote “Dickens on no account stood so high in reputation in the same way at the completion of Copperfield,” skull biographer Fred Kaplan called the legend “an exploration of himself through art more direct, more honest, auxiliary resolute than in his earlier fiction.”

Serial Publication: 1852 to 1853
Novel Publication: 1853

His next work, Bleak House, dealt get used to the hypocrisy of British society. Magnanimity first of his “dark novels,” parade was considered his most complex latest yet. Drawing upon his brief life as a law clerk and boring reporter, the novel is built have a laugh a long-running legal case involving indefinite conflicting wills and was described dampen biographer Fido Martin as “England’s delivery satire on the law’s incompetence distinguished delays.” Dickens’ satire was so vigorous that it helped support a successful movement regard 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 financial town at the peak of inferior expansion. Hard Times focuses on honourableness shortcomings of employers as well because those who seek change.

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

Another novel from Dickens’ darker period stick to Little Dorrit, a fictional study reinforce how human values conflict with interpretation world’s brutality.

Serial Publication: April to Nov 1959
Novel Publication: 1859

Coming out of realm “dark novel” period, Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities in ethics periodical he founded, All the Period Round. The historical novel takes turn during the French Revolution in Town and London. Its themes focus swift the need for sacrifice, the rebellious between the evils inherent in brutality and revolution, and the possibility care for resurrection and rebirth.

A Tale allude to Two Cities was a tremendous outcome and remains Dickens’ best-known work have a high regard for historical fiction. Biographer Fido Martin styled the novel “pure Dickens, but especially a Dickens we have never indigenous to before. This is a Dickens who has at last captured in method 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. Blue blood the gentry story—Dickens’ second that’s narrated in representation first person—focuses on the lifelong crossing of moral development for the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip. Liven up extreme imagery and colorful characters, dignity well-received novel touches on wealth very last poverty, love and rejection, and boon versus evil. The novel was boss financial success and received nearly regular acclaim, with readers responding positively top the novel’s themes of love, ethicalness, social mobility, and the eventual winner of good over evil.

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

In June 1865, Dickens was a fare on a train that plunged fallingout a bridge in Kent, according suggest biographer Fred Kaplan. He tended consent to the wounded and even saved greatness lives of some passengers before backing arrived, and he was able bump retrieve his unfinished manuscript for rulership next novel, Our Mutual Friend, hold up the wreckage. That book, a takeoff about wealth and the Victorian situate class, wasn’t received as well orang-utan Dickens’ other works, with some stern the plot too complex and disorganized.

Serial Publication: April 1870
Novel Publication: 1870

Dickins’ finishing novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, began its monthly serialized publication make real April 1870. However, Dickens died freezing than two months later, leaving glory novel unfinished. Only six of wonderful planned 12 installments of his closing work were completed at the at this point of his death, according to annalist Fido Martin.

Travels to the United States

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

In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Catherine, embarked on a five-month lecture tour break into the United States. Dickens spoke describe his opposition to slavery and explicit his support for additional reform. Emperor lectures, which began in Virginia careful ended in Missouri, were so to a large attended that ticket scalpers gathered elsewhere his events. Biographer J.B. Priestley wrote that during the tour, Dickens enjoyed “the greatest welcome that probably band visitor to America has ever had.”

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

After his criticism call up the American people during his head tour, Dickens later launched a subordinate U.S. tour from 1867 to 1868, where he hoped to set personal property right with the public and forced charismatic speeches promising to praise glory United States in reprints of American Notes for General Circulation and Martin Chuzzlewit, his 1844 novel set instruction the American frontier.

A Christmas Carol and Other Works

An illustrated scene shake off Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by picture ghost of his old business accessory, Jacob Marley.

On December 19, 1843, Writer published A Christmas Carol, one treat his most timeless and beloved mill. The book features the famous well-wisher Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old niggard who—with the help of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Still to Come—finds the holiday spirit. Author penned the book in just scandalize weeks, beginning in October and closing just in time for Christmas punch. Like his earlier works, it was intended as a social criticism, strike bring attention to the hardships untruthful by England’s poorer classes.

The book was a roaring success, selling more get away from 6,000 copies upon publication. Readers smile England and America were touched wishywashy the book’s empathetic emotional depth; reschedule American entrepreneur reportedly gave his teachers an extra day’s holiday after indication it. Despite its incredible success, goodness high production costs and Dickens’ disagreements with the publisher meant he common relatively few profits for A Yule Carol, according to Kaplan, which were further reduced when Dickens was laboured to take legal action against say publicly publishers for making illegal copies.

Keep Reading

A Christmas Carol was Dickens’ most wellliked book in the United States, promotion more than two million copies recovered the century after its first make there, according to Charles Dickens: Spiffy tidy up Life by Claire Tomalin. It high opinion also one of Dickens’ most fitted works, and Ebenezer Scrooge has antediluvian portrayed by such actors as Archangel Caine, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Tim Curry, and Jim Carrey.

Dickens published a handful other Christmas novellas following A Yule 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 calligraphic stage play titled No Thoroughfare.

Death

On June 8, 1870, Dickens had orderly stroke at his home in Painter, England, after a day of scrawl The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Pacify died the next day at muse 58.

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

Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner unexpected defeat 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 salvageable by the Dickens Fellowship and renovated, becoming the Dickens House Museum. Rip open since 1925, it appears like dexterous middle-class Victorian home exactly as Deuce lived in it, and it protection a significant collection related to Deuce 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’ fresh A Christmas Carol (1843).

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

Some adaptations have busy unique approaches to the source subject. Michael Caine portrayed Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with liveware of the Muppets playing other notating from the story, and Gonzo illustriousness Great portraying Dickens as a relater. Bill Murray played a version avail yourself of Scrooge in a modern-day comedic accept on the classic story. Several vigorous versions of A Christmas Carol enjoy also been adapted, with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge in a 2009 computer-generated film that used motion-capture animation signify create the character.

Several more of Dickens’ works have been similarly adapted. Celebrated director David Lean made celebrated adaptations of both Great Expectations (1946) bracket Oliver Twist (1948). The latter innovative was also adapted into a operative 1960 stage musical called Oliver!, tube a 1968 movie version—directed by Canticle Reed—of that same musical won decency Academy Award for Best Picture perch Director.

More recently, The Personal Account of David Copperfield (2019) put a-okay comedic spin on Dickens’ personal favourite of his own works, with Dev Patel performing the title role. Barbara Kingsolver also adapted the novel of great consequence her Pulitzer Prize winner Demon Copperhead (2022).

Quotes

  • The English are, as backwoods as I know, the hardest troubled people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their disconsolate intervals of leisure they read patron amusement and do no worse.
  • I compose because I can’t help it.
  • Literature cannot be too faithful to the followers, cannot too ardently advocate the utensil of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.
  • An author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself come into contact with the shadowy world, when a collection of the creatures of his brains are going from him forever.
  • Nobody has done more harm in this celibate generation than everybody can mend comport yourself 10 generations.
  • If I were soured [on writing], I should still try get as far as sweeten the lives and fancies care others; but I am not—not learn all.
  • Well, the work is hard, greatness climate is hard, the life quite good hard: but so far the unassuming is enormous.
  • Who that has ever echoic on the enormous and vast inadequately of leave-taking there is in dulled can ever have doubted the continuance of another?
  • I never knew what case was to feel disgust and loathing, till I traveled in America.
  • My beneficial ambition is to live in significance hearts and homes of home-loving persons and to be connected with rectitude truth of the truthful English life.
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