DICKENS, CHARLES,

born Feb. 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, Eng. died June 9, 1870, Gad's Hill, near Chatham, Kent in full Charles John Huffam Dickens English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). The insecurity of Dickens' childhood, and in particular his labour in a squalid factory, permanently shaped his view of life and his writing. After serving as a solicitor's clerk, he worked as a reporter, successively, in the law courts, in Parliament, and on London newspapers. Dickens' career as a writer of fiction began in 1833 with short stories and essays in periodicals, and in 1837 his comic novel The Pickwick Papers (originally serialized in 20 monthly installments) made him the most popular author of his time in England. In Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby (serialized 183739 and 183839, respectively) and subsequent novels in the 1840s, his heightened concern with vulgarity and evil coexists with his basic optimism, which appears in perhaps its purest form in the semiautobiographical David Copperfield (1850). Afterward, however, from Bleak House (1853) through Our Mutual Friend (1865), the harsher aspects of Victorian industrial society become predominant, the comic spirit is subdued and the satire more biting. During this period he separated from his wife and began a protracted affair with a young actress. Beginning in 1858 he achieved great popularity for his public readings, which he imbued with intense emotional involvement.