Charles Dickens Would Have Been 200 Years Old

Charles turns a double century 

Yesterday , 7^th February saw the 200^th 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.