Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786 – 1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow, 1789 – 1863) on February 7 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London.
Ordnance Terrace, Chatham – Dickens’ home from 1817 to 1822Although his early years seem to have been an idyllic time, he thought himself then as a “very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy”.[2] He spent his time outdoors, but also read voraciously, with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked later in life of his extremely poignant memories of childhood and his continuing photographic memory of the people and events that helped to bring his fiction to life. His family was moderately wealthy, and he received some education at the private William Giles’ school in Chatham. This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father, after spending far too much money entertaining and retaining his social position, was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtors’ prison.The 12-year-old Dickens began working ten hour days in a Warren’s boot-blacking factory, located near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on the jars of thick polish. This money paid for his lodgings in Camden Town and helped him to support his family. The shocking conditions of the factory made an ingrained impression on Dickens.After a few months, his family was able to leave Marshalsea, but their financial situation did not improve until later, partly due to money inherited from his father’s family. Dickens’s mother did not immediately remove him from the boot-blacking factory, owned by a relation of hers, and he never forgave her for this. Resentment of his situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, championing the causes of the poor and oppressed. As Dickens wrote in David Copperfield, his personal favorite as well as his most patently autobiographical novel,[3] “I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!” He eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London.In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a law clerk. This was a junior office position, but it came with the potential of helping him up to the Bar. It was here that he gained his detailed knowledge of the law and the poor’s suffering at the hands of its many injustices, together with a loathing of inefficient bureaucracy which stayed with him for the rest his life. He showed his contempt for the lawyer’s profession in his many literary works.At the age of seventeen, he became a court stenographer and, in 1830, met his first love, Maria Beadnell. It is believed that she was the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield. Maria’s parents disapproved of the courtship and effectively ended the relationship when they sent her to school in Paris.
Look at this web page and find out about Dicken’s times. Find out the name of the period when he lived. One of Dicken’s most popular works is a Christmas Carol, can you imagine the plot of this novel?
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gener 31st, 2008 a les 18:56
Lo mai vist del Shakespeare! un gran filosof australià!