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It is humbling, as a writer to reflect that Charles Dickens, one of the greatest English authors was born over 200 years ago on February 7th 1812. As a child he experienced the poverty that he so effectively wrote about in later life. His Portsmouth based parents were John and Elizabeth Dickens and his father was imprisoned for bad debt when Charles was only nine years old.
Charles had only just started in school, but found himself taken from it and sent to work in Warren's blacking factory in appalling conditions. He was separated from his entire family so loneliness and despair were no strangers to him. Happily after three years he was returned to school but those early bad experiences were reflected in both David Copperfield and Great Expectations, both written much later in life.
Charles began the literary path by starting out in journalism becoming like his father before
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Not that fiction writing was all he did by any means. He was editing weekly publications, writing travel books, and both writing and performing - once in 1851 in front of Queen Victoria herself - stage plays.
Charles wrote and published an autobiography, administered charitable organisations, was a theatre enthusiast, and with seemingly limitless energy spent a lot of time lecturing in the USA against slavery. This continued with Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins who were fellow writers as the trio toured Italy. How he found time for the writing of his immortal novels is a mystery but he was a prolific writer.
His drive, energy and insights into the intricacies of the human condition and character were all reflected in the quality of his work, which has for two centuries stood the test of time and is as relevant and potent today as it was then in terms of revealing the heart of human frailty and