The Charles Dickens PageDedicated to bringing the genius of Charles Dickens to a new generation...since 1997 | Tweet this! |
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.
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![]() 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.
Learn about Charles Dickens
Learn what it was like to live in Charles Dickens' London.Explore Charles Dickens' London with an interactive map.
Meet over 1000 Charles Dickens characters, cross referenced, and many with illustrations.
Learn about Charles Dickens' life, family, and work through an illustrated hypertext biography.
Learn about Charles Dickens' association with the celebration of Christmas.
Learn about Charles Dickens' home Gads Hill Place.
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
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!'"
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