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Write a note on the life and works of Charles Dickens.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born at Portea on February 7. 1812. He was the second child of John Dickens and his wife Elizabeth. His father was a clerk in the Navy pay office. He was always getting into debt. So young Charles grew up as a poor insure boy. After the family moved to London, John Dickens was arrested and put into prison. Elizabeth went with four of her children to stay with her husband in Jail as it was allowed in those days and Charles stayed back and worked in a blacking factory. Here, for six shillings a week, he pasted lables on blacking bottles. Those few months were the worst for Dickens. He never forgot them for the rest of his life. However, a relative left some money for the family and John Dickens was able to get his release from prison. After paying his debts he sent his son to school where he remained for two or three years.

At the age of fifteen Charles Dickens left school. He joined a firm of solicitors but this job could not fulfil his ambitions. He now began to learn short-hand as he wished to become a journalist. After two years he became one of the Parliamentary reporters of the British press. But this profession also failed to materialise his ambitions. So he turned towards the stage. During his spare time he haunted the theatres and music-halls of London.

Dickens began his career as a writer in 1833. He began writing, little sketches of Cockney characters. He signed them ‘Boz’. After sometime he was appointed the regular staff of a newspaper, “The Morning Chronicle”. Then he began writing the first number of The Pickwick Papers’. He married Miss Catherine Hogarth. Now he realised that his ambitions could be materialised only through literature. He wrote ‘Oliver Twist’ (1837-38), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), Old Curiosity Shop (1840) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). At the invitation of Washington Irring, Dickens left for the U.S.A. He was accorded enthusiastic reception there. He wrote his impressions of “American Notes (1842) and “Martin Chuzzlewit” (1843), a collection of five Christmas stories.

Accompanied by Mrs. Dickens and her sister Miss Hogarth, he left England for Italy where he remained till July 1845. “In Pictures from Italy” (1845), he has graphically described his experiences of the tour. On his return from Italy he was appointed the Chief Editor of the “Daily News”. But he found the job full of drudgery. So he left it in three weeks. In 1846, he went to Paris. He met the elder Dumas Victor Hugo. He began “David Copperfield” in 1846. He became the editor of a newly started weekly Magazine “Household Words.”

Charles Dicken began “Bleak House” in 1852. A Child’s History of England’ was published in three volumes in 1852-53 and 1854 respectively. Hard Times’ first appeared in the “Household words’ in serial form and was later published in book form in 1854. “Little Dorrit” appeared in 1858. In 1859 Dickens started “All the year Round”. It was a sequel to “Household Words”. This new journal was run more on literary lines. He contributed his “A Tale of Two Cities” to this journal. He wrote “Great Expectations” (1860) also for “All the year Round”. “Our Mutual Friend” (1864) is his last complete long tale. In 1864 he revisited America. He began his last novel “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” in 1869. But it could not be completed. He died on June 1870.

The novels of Dickens showed the dark side of Victorian life. His social criticism helped to improve school and jail conditions while his literary characters and moving stories touched the hearts of readers all over the world. Dickens was the representative novelist of the age. He mirrored London life in his novels. He wrote with the purpose of stressing the social evils of his times. He was a novelist with a purpose. His novels reflect his age. He painted realistic portrait of London life.