John Forster published the biography of Charles Dickens titled – ‘Life of Charles Dickens’. It is mentioned that the main events that marked Dicken’s childhood continued to influence him as an adult.
“They used to say I was an odd child, and I suppose I was. I am an odd man, perhaps”.
Gone Astray, Household Words, 13 August 1853 Dickens began publishing the weekly periodical Household Words in 1850, and it was included in 1859 into All the Year Round, which he edited until his death. This anthology brings together the best pieces of his journalism from 1851-59 - from attacks on slums and factory accidents to comic sketches of contemporary
life.
CD uses his own personal experience in his works- His father’s arrest for bankruptcy and time in the Marshalsea prison, the period he spent working as a ‘poor little drudge’ in a warehouse and his loneliness as he wandered the streets of London, slowly sinking into the dirt and misery of those other poor workers living on the edges of the society, tramp existence hardening into a permanent way of life. The figure of an innocent child lost in the city is one that Dickens returns to like someone touching a bruise, at once drawing him back and driving him on. It is these events that stirred the young writer’s mind as he faced the world and established his place within it.
On 7th February 1812, Charles Huffam Dickens was born. He had one brother and two sisters. In Dicken’s childhood the family moved to London and then down to Chatham and the shipyards, Kent Marshes and river Medway which inspired landscape and action in Great Expectations. Charles was a small and sick child who enjoyed books, acting, joking and singing and wrote a couple of tragedies when he was eight or nine. He had a fascination for the Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One nights which he read when he was young, and it made a lasting impression which helped to shape his imagery and the adventurous wanderings of many of his characters. His education was interrupted in 1822 when the family moved back to London. There he became a household drudge, cleaning boots and going to the shops. The solitude and humiliation he felt when he was 11 or 12 made him discover the underbelly of London with its unpleasant streets, filthy river, its crimes, drunks, prostitutes, crowds and lonely people which all go to the creation of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. He started working as a clerk and that experience is used in the office scenes of Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol. He was inspired by his father who was making a fresh start as a reporter. Feeling his lack of education, he read history and the classics of literature in the British Museum Reading Room. Great Expectations is autobiographical and like Pip he too was wounded by a bad mother figure. He wounded but healed by the illiterate loving blacksmith Joe and by the convict Magwitch for whom he steals. Joe and Magwitch are two of Dicken’s best virtuous people.
Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812 to June 9, 1870) was a British novelist, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator who wrote such beloved classic novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Charles Dickens went on to produce a massive amount of writing during his lifetime. He published fifteen novels, wrote hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces, lectured and performed both in England and in the United States, wrote plays, wrote thousands of letters and edited two journals. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is suggestive of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically disgusting characters. On December 25th he met John Forster who became his close friend and
biographer. He died suddenly in 1870, leaving unfinished his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
