It's cool to know about Charles Dickens because he's one of the best known writers in the English language, except for William Shakespeare, maybe. So, let's go. He didn't write plays like Shakespeare.
He wrote long novels with... unforgettable characters like Ebenezer Scrooge from the Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist asking for more soup telling us about the ups and downs of their complicated lives and these stories are so good they're still read by lots of people today Charles Dickens had loads of energy and masses of imagination. He wrote 15 novels including David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House and The Old Curiosity Shop, plus loads of short stories, several plays, thousands of letters and all with a scratchy quill pen.
Imagine that! On top of that, he gave readings and lectures around England and in the USA too. So, He was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812, just a year after the American writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
And what was going on then? He was three when Wellington beat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, and he was 13 when the first trains started rolling. He was 25 when Victoria became Queen of England, and that's why he's known as the Victorian novelist.
His stories came out in monthly or weekly magazines, in episodes a bit like a Netflix series, and each episode had a nail-biting cliffhanger ending, but you couldn't just play next to see what happens. You had to wait for the next magazine to come out. And there was no TV or laptop, no radio, no electric lighting.
Not much to keep you entertained. He developed a massive fan base because his stories were interesting for everyone. If you couldn't read, you went to hear the books being read aloud.
His stories have funny jokes, happy moments, scary bits, sad bits, mean nasty baddies and kind little ladies. All kinds of human life and experience. But it wasn't just entertainment.
His books shone a light on people having a tough time. Dickens wrote about poor people struggling to make ends meet, about young children forced into work, about desperate criminals, as well as the upper classes, sometimes heartless, sometimes caring. It was the time of the Industrial Revolution when people were moving from the countryside into the cities to find jobs.
Manufacturing was replacing farm labour and young children were being put to work down coal mines and up chimneys and in factories. But how did he know about this? Charles Dickens wasn't born into poverty. poverty but his father was thrown into jail for not paying his bills.
Then Charles got to see with his own eyes what a Victorian prison was like. He was just 12 and he was forced to find work in a rat infested boot polish factory to survive. Charles started out as a newspaper reporter and as a side hustle he wrote short stories under his nickname Boz.
These got noticed so he wrote his first book, The Pickwick Papers. It was an instant hit. He got married at 24 to Katherine Hogarth, the daughter of his boss at the newspaper. She produced lots of children. He produced lots of books.
But 20 years later and now very famous, he fell in love with an 18-year-old actress called Ellen Ternan. He was such a celebrity that he couldn't divorce. So he left Catherine in the house, gave her some money and moved in with Ellen.
He kept writing books and going on reading tours twice to the USA where he had dinner with the president and met the writer Edgar Allan Poe. He just worked non-stop. stop. But he was getting worn out.
He had a stroke at 57 and recovered, but he had another one a year later that killed him. He'd always insisted he wanted a low-cost burial, but instead he was laid to rest in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey in London. At the time these words were spoken. Charles Dickens was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering and the oppressed. And by his death, one of England's greatest writers has been lost to the world.
Charles Dickens is known as the great Victorian novelist with a string of smash hits we love to read even today. Thank you, Charles Dickens.