Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was an English novelist and the most popular writer of the Victorian age. The son of a clerk who was imprisoned for debt, he was put to work in a blacking factory at twelve, an experience that marked all his fiction. He published his novels in monthly or weekly parts, beginning with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, and followed them with Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations and a dozen others. He died in 1870 with The Mystery of Edwin Drood half finished, leaving a puzzle that has never been solved. Dickens also edited magazines and gave public readings that drew huge crowds.