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Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic.

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Shortly after his birth, Dickens’ parents, John and Elizabeth, moved the family to Bloomsbury in London and then to Chatham in Kent, where Dickens spent much of his childhood.

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Throughout his career, Dickens published a total of 15 novels. His most well-known works include:

Oliver Twist (1837-1838)

Oliver Twist, Dickens first novel, follows the life of an orphan living in the streets. The book was inspired by how Dickens felt as an impoverished child forced to get by on his wits and earn his own keep.

A Christmas Carol (1843)

On December 19, 1843, Dickens published A Christmas Carol. The book features the timeless protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly old miser, who, with the help of ghosts, finds the Christmas spirit.

Dickens penned the book in just six weeks, beginning in October and finishing just in time for the holiday celebrations. The novel was intended as a social criticism, to bring attention to the hardships faced by England’s poorer classes.

Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son (1846 - 1848)

Taking a dark view of England, Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son is considered pivotal to Dickens’ body of work in that it set the tone for his other novels.

David Copperfield (1849 - 1850)

Dickens tapped into his own personal experiences, from his difficult childhood to his work as a journalist. Although David Copperfield is not considered Dickens’ best work, it was his personal favorite. It also helped define the public’s expectations of a Dickensian novel.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

In 1859 Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities, a historical novel that takes place during the French Revolution in Paris and London. He published it in a periodical he founded, All the Year Round.
The story focuses on themes of the need for sacrifice, the struggle between the evils inherent in oppression and revolution, and the possibility of resurrection and rebirth.

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Famous Charles Dickens quotes:
“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.” - Oliver Twist
“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.” - Oliver Twist
“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” - Our Mutual Friend
“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.” - A Christmas Carol
“The most important thing in life is to stop saying, ‘I wish’ and start saying, ‘I will’. Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.” (David Copperfield)

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Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen, and technological developments as well as the qualities of his work enabled his fame to spread worldwide very quickly.

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His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work that were given less weight by his contemporaries, his popularity has never ceased. The most abundantly comic of English authors, he was much more than a great entertainer. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his apprehension of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in 19th-century literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.

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Beginning of a literary career

Much drawn to the theatre, Dickens nearly became a professional actor in 1832. In 1833 he began contributing stories and descriptive essays to magazines and newspapers; these attracted attention and were reprinted as Sketches by “Boz” (February 1836).

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The same month, he was invited to provide a comic serial narrative to accompany engravings by a well-known artist; seven weeks later the first installment of The Pickwick Papers appeared. Within a few months Pickwick was the rage and Dickens the most popular author of the day.

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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.

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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.

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First major novels
After a year abroad in Italy and writing Pictures from Italy (1846), Dickens published installments of Dombey and Son, which continued till 1848. This completed novel established a new standard in the Dickensian novel and marked the turning point in his career. As its full title indicates, Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son is a study of the influence of the values of a business society on the personal fortunes of a family and those with whom the family meets. It takes a somber view of England at mid-century, and its tone becomes characteristic of Dickens's future novels.
Dickens's next novel, David Copperfield (1849–1850), is the first complete record of the typical course of a young man's life in Victorian England. This autobiographical novel fictionalized elements of Dickens's childhood, his pursuit of a journalism career, and his love life. Though Copperfield is not Dickens's greatest novel, it was his personal favorite.
In 1850 Dickens began a new magazine, Household Words. His editorials and articles touched upon English politics, social institutions, and family life. They also spoke to the fictional treatment of these subjects in Dickens's novels. The weekly magazine ran to 1859, when Dickens began to conduct a new weekly, All the Year Round. In both these periodicals he published some of his major novels.

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Within a year of being hired, Dickens began freelance reporting at the law courts of London. Just a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches to various magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym “Boz.” In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz.

In the same year, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. His series, originally written as captions for artist Robert Seymour’s humorous sports-themed illustrations, took the form of monthly serial installments.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was wildly popular with readers. In fact, Dickens’ captions were even more popular than the illustrations they were meant to accompany.

He later edited magazines including Household Words and All the Year Round, the latter of which he founded.

Children

Dickens married Catherine Hogarth soon after his first book, Sketches by Boz, was published. The couple had a brood of 10 children.

During the 1850s, Dickens suffered two devastating losses: the deaths of his daughter and father. He also separated from his wife in 1858. Dickens slandered Catherine publicly, and struck up an intimate relationship with a young actress named Ellen "Nelly" Ternan.

Sources differ on whether the two started seeing each other before or after Dickens' marital separation; it is also believed that he went to great lengths to erase any documentation alluding to Ternan's presence in his life.

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Death
After suffering a stroke, Dickens died at age 58 on June 9, 1870, at Gad’s Hill Place, his country home in Kent, England.

Five years earlier, Dickens had been in a train accident and never fully recovered. Despite his fragile condition, he continued to tour until shortly before his death.

Dickens was buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey, with thousands of mourners gathering at the beloved author’s gravesite.

Scottish satirical writer Thomas Carlyle described Dickens’ passing as “an event worldwide, a unique of talents suddenly extinct.” At the time of his death, his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was unfinished.

Movies
Many of Dickens’ major works have been adapted for movies and stage plays, with some, like A Christmas Carol, repackaged in various forms over the years.

Hollywood introduced another twist to the author's celebrated holiday work with the November 2017 release of The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens as Dickens and Christopher Plummer as his famed fictional character of Ebenezer Scrooge.