Charles turns a double century
Yesterday , 7th February saw the 200th
anniversary of the birth of English author Charles Dickens, author of such
classics as” Nicholas Nickleby” ,” A Tale of Two Cities”,” Martin Chuzzlewit” ,”
Oliver Twist”, “Bleak House” and “A Christmas Carol”. There were a number of celebrations throughout
the UK.
He was born in Postsea and spent his early years at
Bloomsbury and Chatham in Kent. As a child he read voraciously, his near
photographic memory of people and events of his childhood were used extensively
in his writings. Part of his education was spent at the Private William Giles
School in Chatham.
When his father was
imprisoned Charles, then 12 , was boarded with a family friend Elizabeth
Roylance , ( she was later immortalised with a few alterations as Mrs Pipchin
in “Dombey
and Son” ). Some time late he lived in a back attic in a house
belonging to an insolvent-court agent, who , along with his wife were the
inspiration for the Garland family in “The Old Curiosity Shop”. Even the
prison his father was incarcerated in the Marshalsea
debtor's
prison in Southwark became the setting in “Little Dorritt”.
To pay his board and help the family out Dickens was forced
to leave school and he took a job, working ten hours a day at Warrens Blacking
Warehouse, where he earned six shillings a week,the strenuous working
conditions made a deep impression on him and had a significant influence on his
fiction and essays. “David Copperfield” is known to be
the most autobiographical novel, arising from his own situation and also the conditions under which working
class people were forced to live.
In 1827 Dickens worked at the law offices of Ellis and
Blackmore , attorneys of Holborn Court Grays Inn. Having learned Gurneys system
of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. Thomas
Charlton ( a distant relative ) who was a freelance reporter at Doctor’s
Commons and he allowed Dickens to share his box there to report the legal
proceedings for almost four years. This part of his life is mirrored in novels
including “Nicholas Nicklelby , Dombey and Son and Bleak House.
We have a number of novels by Charles Dickens on sale as
well as other related material such as “Dickens of London “(a work based on
Yorkshire Television's Dickens of London, Wolf Mankowitz, who scripted the
series. Mankowitz helps to explain the
apparent complexities and contradictions of Dickens's character and to show
that behind the moods and messages in his works were concern, strife, energy,
compassion and determination)and “The Mutual Friend” (an exciting
novel about the life and times of the inimitable Charles Dickens. It brings the
well-known nineteenth-century author roaring to life). We also have a number of
books relating to the times that Dickens lived including “Dickens in His Time” Biographies
include Peter Ackroyd’s “Dickens”
and Christopher HIbberts , “The Making of Charles Dickens”
We also have some books by Monica Dickens, the great grand
daughter of Charles.
