Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth, in 1812. When he was 12, his father was jailed for debt, and Charles left school to paste labels on pots of boot blacking in a London factory. The experience shaped how he wrote about poor children for the rest of his life.

He became a court and parliamentary reporter, then a sketch writer. The Pickwick Papers (1836) made him famous at 24. Most of his novels came out in monthly or weekly parts, which built a mass audience. A Christmas Carol (1843) follows the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is shown his past, present and future by three spirits and changes his ways. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. Great Expectations (1861) traces Pip, an orphan who comes into money from a hidden source and learns what his ambitions cost.

He also edited magazines and gave public readings across Britain and America. Critics have long noted his sentimental, thinly drawn women. He died at his home in Kent in 1870, aged 58, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.