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Charles Dickens (Charles Dickens was born in Portsmout on the southern coast of England, in 1812. He had an unhappy childhood His father was imprisoned for debt and at the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory (warehouse that made boot polish). When his father was released, he was sent to a school in London. At fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at a lawyer's office. By 1832 he had become a very successful shorthand reporter of parliament debates in the House of Commons and began to work as a reporter for a newspaper. In 1833 his first story appeared and in 1836, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the pen name "Boz", publishing "Sketches by Boz", a collection of articles and tales describing London People and scenes. It was immediately followed by "The Posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club" (also known as The Pickwick Papers),which was published in_ instalments and revealed Dickens's humoristic and satirical qualities. After the success of "The Pickwick Papers", Dickens started a full-time career as a novelist and produced work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate. "Oliver Twist" was begun in 1837 and continued in monthly installments until April 1839. "Nicholas Nickleby" was published in 1839. In 1842 he embarked on a visit to Canada and the United States speaking out in favour of international copyright and the abolition of slavery. In October of that year, his "American Notes" appeared. "Martin Chuzzlewit", part of which was set in America, appeared in 1844, one year after the publication of "A Christmas Carol". Dickens had a photographic memory of people and events in his childhood, which he used in his autobiographical novels "Oliver Twist" (1838), "David Copperfield" (1850) and "Little Dorrit" (1857), whose protagonists became the symbols of an exploited childhood, confronted with the bitter realities of slums and factories. Other works include "Bleak House" (1853), "Hard Times" (1854) and "Great Expectations"( 1861), dealing with social issues such as the conditions ot the poor and the working class in general. | Dickens died in 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dickens always seemed to have something new to say about the city and showed an intimate knowledge of it. He gradually developed a more radical social view, although he did not become a revolutionary thinker. He was aware of the spiritual and material corruption of daily reality under the impact of industrialisation and the result was an increasingly critical attitude towards his society. In fact, in his mature works Dickens succeeded in drawing popular. ‘attention to public abuses, evils and wrongs by mingling terrible descriptions of London misery and crime with the most amusing sketches of the city. Characters. Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 8th-century upper- middle-class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. His aim was to arouse the reader's interest by exaggerating his characters habits and the language of the London middle and lower classes, like shopkeepers and tradesmen, whose social peculiarities, Vanity and ambition he ridiculed freely, though without sarcasm. He was always on the side of the poor, the outcast and the working class. Children are often the most important characters in Dickens's novels. There are a lot of instances of good, wise children in contrast with worthless parents and other grown-ups. The novelist's ability lay both in making his readers love his children and putting them forward as models of the way people ought to behave to one another. Didactive aims Dickens's task was never to get the most wronged and suffering to rebel, or even encourage discontent, but to make the ruling classes aware of ithout offending his middle-class readers. Through his novels, the wealthier classes acquired a knowledge of their poorer neighbours of whom they previously knew nothing. 
