Charles Dickens - Did You Know?

The life and times of Charles John Huffam Dickens - a brief overview of the great British novelist, born two centuries ago.

By Carey Latimore

It’s All About the Numbers

2012: The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birthday
1812: Born 7 February, in Portsea, the second of eight children
1817-22: Childhood years (age 5-10) in Chatham, Kent
1822: Moved with his family to Camden Town, London
1824-26: Worked 10-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present day Charing Cross railway station.
1827-28: Worked as a junior clerk in law offices, in London, before becoming a freelance reporter of legal proceedings (which he did for nearly four years)
1830: Age 18, met his first love, Maria Beadnell (her parents disapproved, sent her away to school in Paris and ended their relationship)
1833: First published story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk, in London periodical, Monthly Magazine 1834: Political journalist for The Morning Chronicle, travelled the country, reporting on election campaigns and parliamentary debate
1836: First published novel, The Pickwick Papers
1836-39: Editor of literary magazine, Bentley’s Miscellany
1837-39: Wrote and published (in monthly instalments) his second and third novels, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby
1836: Age 24, married Catherine Thomson Hogarth, on 2 April
1837-39: Set up home with Catherine in Holborn, London
1843: A Christmas Carol published
1861: Great Expectations published
1869: Collapsed with a mild stroke on 22 April, after a series of ‘farewell readings’ in Scotland, Ireland and England
1870: Final public appearance on 2 May at a Royal Academy banquet, attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales
1870: Died 9 June, age 58

Popular

• Dickens was widely considered the greatest novelist of the Victorian era and his iconic novels and short stories continue to be studied and enacted to this day. His works have never been out of print.

• Dickens made popular the practice of publishing writing in monthly instalments, which, like modern day TV series, would end on a cliffhanger, enticing the readers to come back for more.

• The Georgian terraced house in Holborn, where newlyweds Charles and Catherine Dickens lived, and where their two eldest daughters were born, is now The Charles Dickens Museum. Opened in 1925, it contains the world’s most extensive and important collection of items from the life and work of Dickens, spread over four floors.

• David Copperfield (1850) was Dickens’ almost autobiographical novel and, some say, his personal favourite.

• The couch on which Dickens died is kept at the Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth, England.

Philanthropist

• In 1846, together with Angela Burdett Coutts, Dickens founded Urania Cottage, a home for ‘fallen women’ in Shepherd’s Bush, London.

• He wrote anonymously to help mishandled children in The Examiner, a weekly publication.

• Not only did Dickens write an article to help publicise the opening of Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1852, he also gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol in 1958, which helped to raise enough money for the hospital to buy the neighbouring house and thereby increase its capacity from 20 to 75 beds.

The Invisible Woman

• At the age of 45, in 1957, Dickens met and fell for 18-year-old Ellen (Nelly) Ternan. They began a secret affair but were discovered by Charles‘ wife, Catherine. Divorce was not an option for someone as famous as Charles, so in May 1858, he and Catherine separated.

• In September 1860, Dickens made a huge bonfire in a field near his Gad’s Hill home and burned all his correspondence, keeping only those things that were related to business. There is therefore no official record of his personal relationship with Ellen Ternan, who also burned all the letters Dickens had sent her. Claire Tomalin’s book, The Invisible Woman (1991) about Charles Dickens and Ellen Ternan, was later turned into a play by Simon Gray, called Little Nell.

• In June 1865, whilst returning with Ellen and her mother from Paris, Dickens survived a train crash - the first-class carriage in which they were travelling was the only one that had remained on the tracks.

• Charles loved and supported Ellen, keeping her in houses that he rented under false names and, upon his death, bequeathed her an income from a trust fund that would ensure she would not have to work for the rest of her life.

Ravens, Ghosts and Childhood Dreams

• As a young adult, Dickens had a pet raven, called Grip, which he loved dearly and used as his muse for the raven in Barnaby Rudge. When the talkative and playful Grip died in 1841, Dickens had him stuffed and he is now in the Free Library of Philadelphia.

• The name Fagin (the well-known character in Oliver Twist) came from a boy, Bob Fagin, with whom Dickens used to work, at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse.

• Charles and Catherine Dickens had 10 children; Charles Jr, Mary, Kate, Walter, Francis, Alfred, Sydney, Henry, Dora and Edward.

• Dickens lived briefly in Italy in 1844.

• In March 1856, Dickens realised his childhood dream when he bought Gads Hill Place, in Kent, as his country retreat. He had wanted to own the mansion since he had first seen it back in 1821, at age nine.

• Interested in the supernatural, Dickens became one of the earliest members of The Ghost Club, a paranormal investigation and research organisation, founded in London in 1862, that focussed mainly on ghosts and hauntings.

• On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered a stroke, whilst lying on a couch in the dining room of his beloved Gads Hill Place. He never regained consciousness and died the next day. Following his death, Dickens’ son, Charles Jr bought the house but due to ill health, sadly had to give it up in 1879. The house became the Gad’s Hill School in 1924 and is today a Grade I listed building.

• Charles Dickens was buried in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey, despite his personal wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral in a private and unostentatious manner.

• Dickens specified in his will that there should be no memorial erected to him. In 1891, Francis Edwin Elwell cast a life-size bronze statue of Dickens, which is now located in Clark Park in Philadelphia.