The World of Charles Dickens

Where the Dickens Did He Come From?

• Born February 7, 1812

• Lived most of his life in London

• In 1824, Dickens worked at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse

• Also in 1824, Charles’s father was taken to debtors’ prison. His family joined him there in 1827; this event had a huge impact on his writing.

• He fought for children’s rights.• He was an advocate of child labor laws to protect

children.• He opposed cruelty, deprivation, and corporal

punishment of children.• He believed in and lobbied for just treatment of

criminals.

A Twist in Life• In 1836 Dickens

gets married to Catherine Hogarth (who ends up leaving him) the same year of his first published work, Sketches by Boz.

• A year later, when his first child is born, Dickens publishes The Pickwick Papers. (He ends up fathering 10 children in total)

• The same year, he publishes Oliver Twist, which remains a classic still today.

What About the Rest of the World?

• Alas, in 1837…

– King William IV of England dies

– Victoria becomes Queen of England

– Benjamin Disraeli delivers his first speech in the House of Commons

Also in 1837…• Also in 1837…– Industrialist August

Borsig opens iron foundry and engine-building factory in Berlin–Wheatstone and

Cooke patent electric telegraph–Dutchman Johannes

Diderik born (Nobel Prize physics in 1910)

What the Dickens Did he Write??

• A fun fact: For some works, Dickens was paid per word, which explains why some of his writing is so lengthy!

The Death of Dickens(although his writing lives on)

• 1870 -- Dickens, who had been in declining health since 1866, died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

• He is buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in London

• Dickens’s epitaph: • “He was a sympathizer to the

poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England’s greatest writers is lost to the world.”