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Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in February 1812. ‘Public and private’ describes his early childhood, his first jobs, and his move into writing. His father’s imprisonment for debt when he was just 12 led to the most painful episode of his life. His first sketch appeared in December 1833 and he went on to write many more under the nickname of Boz. He married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and before he was 30 was one of the most famous men in Britain. By the late 1840s, he felt financially secure and could devote time to social reform issues. His later work and the failure of his marriage are also described. ...Less

Charles Dickens became an adjective in his own lifetime. By the 1850s, he was ‘Dickenesque’ and ‘Dickensy’; ‘Dickensian’ came in the decade after his death. Contradictions beset the many connotations of ‘Dickensian’: on one hand conviviality and good cheer; on the other oppression, injustice, poverty, and urban squalor. The meanings accruing around ‘Dickensian’ also have to do with his manner of writing, increasingly pejorative as Victorian fiction fell out of fashion. But Dickensian energy is something that always attracts. Dickens has been and always will be bigger than his books, as their spirits overflow into the conduits of communal affect. ...Less

‘City Laureate’ describes Charles Dickens as our first and best novelist of the city. London in the mid-19th century was the supreme modern urban space and Dickens its chronicler. Dickens took the city for his first subject, and was instantly recognized for his skill in skewering what everyone had seen, but nobody else had consciously noted. Dickens saw himself as the presiding spirit of the city. The first to celebrate the experiences of metropolitan living, he was also first to explore its horrors. To redress some of these evils, Dickens looked to practical solutions. He campaigned for sanitary reforms, which would cleanse the city, and supported ragged schools for the poorest children. ...Less