Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 7, 1812 – June 9, 1870), 
pen-name “Boz”, was an English novelist of the Victorian era. The 
popularity of his books/short stories during his lifetime and to 
the present is demonstrated by the fact that none of his novels 
have ever gone out of print.

Childhood

Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, to John Dickens, a naval 
pay clerk, and his wife Elizabeth Barrow. When he was five, the 
family moved to Chatham, Kent. When he was ten, the family 
relocated to Camden Town in London.

His early years were an idyllic time for him. He described himself 
then as a “very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy”. 
He spent his time in the out-doors, reading voraciously with a 
particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett 
and Henry Fielding. He talked in later life of his extremely 
strong memories of childhood and his continuing photographic memory 
of people and events help bring his fiction to life.

His family was moderately well off and he received some education 
at a private school but all that changed when his father, after 
spending too much money entertaining and retaining his social 
position, was imprisoned for debt. At the age of twelve Dickens 
was deemed old enough to work and began working for 10 hours a day 
in Warren’s boot-blacking factory located near the present Charing 
Cross railway station. He spent his time pasting labels on the jars 
of thick polish and earned six shillings a week. With this money he 
had to pay for his lodging and help support his family who were 
incarcerated in the nearby Marshalsea debtors’ prison.

After a few years his family’s financial situation improved, partly 
due to money inherited from his father’s family. His family was able 
to leave the Marshalsea but his mother did not immediately remove 
him from the boot-blacking factory which was owned by a relation of 
hers. Dickens never forgave his mother for this and resentment of 
his situation and the conditions working-class people lived under 
became major themes of his works. Dickens wrote, “No advice, no 
counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support from anyone 
that I can call to mind, so help me God!”

In May 1827 Dickens began work as a law clerk, a junior office 
position with potential to become a lawyer. He did not like the 
law as a profession and after a short time as a court stenographer 
he became a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate and travelling 
Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns. His journalism 
informed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz and he 
continued to contribute to and edit journals for much of his life. 
In his early twenties he made a name for himself with his first 
novel, The Pickwick Papers.

On April 2, 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he was 
to have ten children. In 1842 they traveled together to the United 
States; the trip is described in the short travelogue American 
Notes and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin 
Chuzzlewit.

Dickens’ writings were extremely popular in their day and were 
read extensively. His popularity allowed him to buy Gad’s Hill 
Place, in 1856. This large house in Rochester, Kent was very 
special to Dickens as he had walked past it as a child and had 
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 Dickens.