Dickens 1836
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in
Portsmouth in 1812, the second child of a large family. His father
was the son of a butler and a housekeeper, and worked as a clerk in
the Navy Pay Office. The family moved to London when Dickens was
three and to Chatham in Kent two years later. In 1822 Dickens' father was transferred to London and slid seriously
into debt. Dickens did not go back to school and at age twelve set
to work in a blacking factory spending ten hours a day sticking
labels on pots of boot blacking. Shortly afterwards his father was
imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison. His experience in the blacking factory had a profound effect on him, he never told his family about
it.
His father was released from the Marshalsea and, after
nearly a year, took Dickens out of the blacking factory and sent him to
school for two years. At fifteen he started work as a lawyer's clerk. He
became a Parliamentary reporter, and gradually won success first as a
journalist and later as a novelist.
Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836
and she bore him ten children. He seems to have found relationships with
women difficult. In his novels he idolised young girls with a penchant for
housekeeping and ridiculed mature women. In 1857 he met a young actress,
Ellen Ternan, and started a relationship with her that lasted until his
death. In 1858 he separated from Catherine. With the exception of his
eldest son, Dickens' children stayed with their father and saw little of
Catherine after the separation. See Dickens and
Women for more about the Victorian attitudes to women.
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