Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1812. His father was a civil servant. The family lived in Rochester, Kent.

In 1823 his father went to prison because he couldn't pay his debts. 
His family was penniless and Charles stopped school and had to work in a factory to earn money for the family. For the first time he worked with poor people, and he saw a prison when he visited his father. 

These visits forged an opinion in the mind of the young Dickens. He  thought that Britain's society was unjust in the 19th century. Dickens realized that poor people had a hard life.

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Later he continued his studies. Then he started working as a journalist in London. In 1836 he started writing novels. His books were published in monthly magazines. They were very popular.

Dickens's work

In his life, Dickens wrote novels about the society of  the 19th century. The heroes were usually poor people or orphans. The villains in his books were often lawyers, judges and politicians. He sympathized with poor people because of his experiences as a boy when his father went to prison. And he didn't like politicians and lawyers. Dickens's books in English are often compared to Victor Hugo's books in French. 

Dickens died in London in 1870.

These are Dickens's most famous books 

The Pickwick papers (1836)
Oliver Twist (completed in 1839)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1841)
David Copperfield (1850)
The Little Dorrit (1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1861)
 

Dickens's work became very popular in the 20th century. His stories were adapted to the cinema and many films were made of his books

In the 1960s a musical was made of  the novel "Oliver Twist". Oliver Twist was a typical Dickens character : a poor orphan boy who lived in London in the 1830s. And in 2005 the director Roman Polanski made a new film of the same book.