The Man Who Held Grudges: Charles Dickens
A Biography

He was born in Landport, Portsmouth, England and was a famous writer. His name? Charles John Huffham Dickens. Born on February 7th, 1812, Charles was the eldest son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. He had seven siblings, one of which was older than him. Charles had formal education up until the age of twelve, when his father was arrested due to his carelessness with money. John Dickens moved to the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison, and later on the rest of the family joined him, as they were unable to provide for themselves. Except for young Charles. He was required to work in a shoe and boot blacking factory (Warren’s Blacking Warehouse) to make money for the family, and provide for his rent. The family spent just a few months in the prison when John’s grandmother died, leaving him a large sum of money. Due to this inheritance, the debts were paid off and the family released. Charles wanted to stop working at the blacking factory because of the cruel work he did there for such little pay, but his mother refused saying they needed the money. This caused Charles to have a growing dislike against women. At the age of sixteen, Charles worked in a lawyer’s office as a clerk for a year or so, and then quit to become a freelance reporter during elections. Charles disliked lawyers, and it was easily seen through the way he portrayed them in his writing. As a reporter, Charles travelled much more, and gained new experiences with places and people. He remembered these vividly due to his near-photographic memory. After this short career, Charles became an editor for a newspaper for about twenty years and at the same time was writing monthly installments of his first book “The Pickwick Papers”. He also did the sketches to go along with the story under the pseudonym “Boz”. After the Pickwick Papers came Oliver Twist, a story centered around a young orphan boy, Oliver.

Charles wrote many novels, plays, and articles, but his novels were the most famous of them all. His most notable works, other than “The Pickwick Papers” and “Oliver Twist”, were “A Christmas Carol”, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “David Copperfield”, “Bleak House”, and “Great Expectations”. Due to the limited formal education Dickens had, he campaigned for Education, and not only that but he also campaigned for children’s rights and social reform. In his novels, he wrote about social reform, poverty, and turmoil. Charles’ personal life was much like a roller coaster. In 1830, he fell in love with Maria Beadnell, who never really liked him, she just toyed with his emotions. Beadnell’s parents wanted her to marry a richer man, so they sent her off to Paris to complete her studies, ending her contact with Charles. Dickens then vowed that he wouldn’t fall in love again, but six years later, he married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he had ten children. Catherine’s younger sister, Mary, moved in with the Dickens, to aide around the house, but died at the age of seventeen, due to illness. After Mary’s death, Dickens fell in love with her because in his mind she would remain forever young and beautiful, as her sister, Catherine, grew older. By 1858 he was bored with his life and blamed Catherine for it, and then the pair had a messy divorce. At this time, Charles Dickens had fallen in love with an eighteen year old actress, Ellen Ternan, and at the time was forty-eight himself. Though the affair is just speculation as all letters written between the two were burned.

Dickens’ experiences in life were expressed through his writing and the themes presented in the writing. In most of his novels, the beginning contains turmoil, and by the end it all comes together. This happens in “A Christmas Carol” where Ebenezer Scrooge is an ungrateful man, who is unwilling to share his money. One night he is visited by a ghost, his old friend Marley, who has been weighed down by chains, due to all his wrongdoings in life. Marley