Learn more about Charles Dickens' historical masterpiece

Steamboat Trip

From Pittsburgh to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat

During Charles Dickens' 1842 tour of America he describes a fascinating trip aboard the steamboat Messenger down the Ohio river during the heyday of the American steamboat.

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Charles Dickens'

Family and Friends

Cartoon copyright Kipper Williams and Fitzrovia News. Used with permission.

Scenes of family harmony and cozy firesides in many of Charles Dickens' stories seem in stark contrast to his own family life. Growing up, the family situation was often precarious due to his father's trouble with debt, which landed him in debtors' prison in 1824 when Charles was 12.

Learn more about Charles Dickens' family and friends

Dickens on Stage

The Murder of Nancy

In 1868, with his health rapidly declining, Charles Dickens began a farewell reading tour of Britain.

For this tour Dickens added a very passionate and dramatic performance of the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist, despite pleas from his family not to include it, fearing for his health.

Many believe that the energy expended in these performances, which he read with such passion and violence that woman fainted in the aisles, hastened his early death in June, 1870.

Read Dickens' friend Charles Kent's eyewitness account of the reading of Sikes and Nancy.

Oliver Twist

Flash Language

Confused by some of the terms used by The Artful Dodger and others in Fagin's gang of thieves? The slang they use within the group was termed Flash Language by a former British convict, James Hardy Vaux, who compiled a list of such terms in his Vocabulary of the Flash Language written in 1812.

Dickens at the Movies

Charles Dickens' visual style of writing lends itself easily to the stage and screen. The Internet Movie Database lists over 200 films made from Dickens' novels.

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Charles Dickens. The name conjures up visions of plum pudding and Christmas punch, quaint coaching inns and cozy firesides, but also of orphaned and starving children, misers, murderers, and abusive schoolmasters. Dickens was 19th century London personified, he survived its mean streets as a child and, largely self-educated, possessed the genius to become the greatest writer of his age.

Charles Dickens 1843

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of a clerk at the Navy Pay Office. His father, John Dickens, continually living beyond his means, was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824. 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot-blacking factory earning six shillings a week to help support the family.

This dark experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy that became a defining experience in his life, he would later write that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age."

This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and the world he would create through his fiction.

Dickens would go on to write 15 major novels including, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and his personal favorite, David Copperfield. He will forever be associated with the celebration of Christmas due to his Christmas Books, the most popular being A Christmas Carol. Dickens also edited, and contributed to, weekly journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Near the end of his life he traveled throughout Britain and America giving public readings of his work.

Charles Dickens died an old man of 57, worn out with work and travel, on June 9, 1870. He wished to be buried, without fanfare, in a small cemetery in Rochester, Kent, but the Nation would not allow it. He was laid to rest in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, the flowers from thousands of mourners overflowing the open grave. Among the more beautiful bouquets were many simple clusters of wildflowers, wrapped in rags.

Explore the World of Charles Dickens

Mapping the Locations in the Novels Dickens' American Travels 1842 Dickens' Pictures from Italy Map 1844-45 Oliver Twist Map - London Locations Oliver Twist Map - Outside London A Tale of Two Cities - London A Tale of Two Cities - Paris Great Expectations Connections Dickens' Reading Tour of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1858 Charles Dickens' London Aerial Charles Dickens' London Dickens' Rochester/Chatham Map of Nell's Journey from The Old Curiosity Shop The London of Barnaby Rudge

The Many Faces of Ebenezer Scrooge

The Internet Movie Database lists more than 100 actors who have portrayed the famous Dickensian miser. Some of the best are pictured here.

Lionel Barrymore	Reginald Owen	Alistair Sim	Mister Magoo	Albert Finney	Scrooge McDuck
George C Scott	Bill Murray	Michael Caine	Patrick Stewart	Kelsey Grammer	Jim Carrey

Bits of Dickens...

Short examples of Charles Dickens' work that can be read in a single sitting:

• Oliver Asks for More (Oliver Twist)
• Cratchit's Christmas (A Christmas Carol)
• Steamboat Trip (American Notes)
• Omnibuses (Sketches by Boz)
• Mrs Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit)
• The Haves and the Have Nots (American Notes)
• Mr Pickwick Meets the Lady in Yellow Curl Papers (Pickwick Papers)
• More Bits of Dickens

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dickens met the poet during his first American visit in 1842 and the two became friends. Longfellow visited Dickens in England on three occasions and attended Dickens' readings in Boston during Dickens second American visit in 1867/68. Longfellow's daughter, Annie Allegra, attended the readings with her father and later recalled "How the audience loved best of all the Christmas Carol and how they laughed as Dickens fairly smacked his lips as there came the 'smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that,' as Mrs Cratchit bore in the Christmas pudding and how they nearly wept as Tiny Tim cried 'God bless us every one!'"

Find unfamiliar words in Dickens Glossary

Charles Dickens Links Life Charles Dickens Biography The Mystery of Ellen Ternan Dickens Family Tree (17k pdf file) Places Charles Dickens' London The Cleveland Street Workhouse Charles Dickens Cigarette Cards Characters Charles Dickens Characters Dickens' Character Dolls by Edith Russell More Links

Last Updated:
August 3, 2020

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