Life Of Charles Dickens :: essays research papers

The Life of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was on of the literary geniuses of the 19th century. Dickens was the first main stream writer to reach out to the semiliterate class. He did much to make sure his writings were avaliable to the middle class. He published serial novels on a monthly bases. One shilling (one twentieth of a pount) would buy you the next installmenrt to your novell. In a time when novels were almost thirty times as much as one of these serial novels, it put reading within the reach of the middle class, thus highly popularizing charles dickens works. By the popularity of his work he was able to afford a humble middle class life, which was what he always desired. Charles Dickens did not begin his life as a humble middle class child. In fact it was quite the oppisite. He was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. He was the second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Navy pay office, In 1817 Charlews got the first taste of the life he would so strongly desire latter in his life. His family moved to Chatham a small portown in England. Charles enjoyed all the comforts of a humble middle class life. Fresh country air, decent schooling, and books to read on sunny afternoons. It was a short idyll, John Dickens money supply was lacking. He was recalled to London and forced to put his family of 6 in a small, smelly, bleak house in the ugly suburb of Camden town. Then in 1824 a event that shaped Charles Dickens view’s on the world occurred. His family increasingly needing of money, sent there second born child to work in a Warren’s Blackening factory . He worked beside ragged urchins, where paserby’s could see him working through the window. The factory was a foul rat infested palace next to the Thames river. Charles was then abandoned by his parents, John Dickens was arrested for debt, and moved himself and his family into the Marshalsea prison, exceppt for charles who was forced to survive on his own on the streets of London. A place where only have the children raised on them would survive to adulthood. Charles proved to be quite adept at surving for a few months when his father was released thanks to an inheritance, but much to Charles dissappointment his mother forced him to remain at the blackening factory.