A Christmas Carol:
“Charles Dickens,” c. 1867—1868.
Courtesy, Wikimedia Commons.
Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth,
a town on the southern coast of England. Dickens’s childhood
provided much inspiration for his later writings: when Charles was 12,
his father was imprisoned for having too much debt, and Charles was
sent to work in a “blacking factory” for three years. For 10 hours a day,
Charles would paste labels onto jars of shoe polish. His experiences at
the factory were revisited in the horrible treatment undergone by his
characters in David Copper?eld and Oliver Twist.
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Like many writers of his day, Charles Dickens began his writing
career as a journalist, reporting the goings-on at Parliament. His
access to publishers helped him
get his stories into print. Today
we know of Dickens’s works as
long, complete books, but most
of his work was originally published serially. Similar to our
modern television series, shorter episodes of Dickens’s
books would be published monthly in small booklets, sold
for just a shilling each. Each new episode would build
interest as readers shared their reactions and wondered
together what the next installment would bring. His ?rst
popular series, The Pickwick Papers, ran from April 1836 to
November 1837. The success of this project catapulted
Dickens’s career as a novelist.
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These and the next few years of Dickens’s life were
busy ones: He was married to Catherine Hogarth in 1836,
and she gave birth to the ?rst of their 10 children early the
next year. He also wrote two of his more famous novels,
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
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Charles Dickens took his ?rst trip to America in 1842.
He was not impressed with what he saw; his chronicle of the
Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball by John Leech, 1843.
Courtesy, Gutenberg Press.
trip published the following year, American Notes, was critical
of many common American practices—he was disgusted by the chewing (and spitting!) of tobacco
and horri?ed by the keeping of slaves. This publication made him unpopular in America for a while.
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Dickens’s most famous work, A Christmas Carol, was published in 1843. At the time, the
celebration of Christmas was waning as economic and social conditions worsened, a result of the
Industrial Revolution. Rather than write a pamphlet on the injustices he saw around him, Dickens
presented his Christmas Carol, a story in which the redemptive power of Christmas overcomes the
prevailing economic and social inequities of the time. A Christmas Carol went a long way toward
resurrecting the celebration of Christmas in England.
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Charles Dickens died on June 9, 1870, leaving his ?nal novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
un?nished.
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