Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is probably Britain's best-known and best-loved author. His novels, such as Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol, have delighted generations of readers with their warmth and gentle humour, and his own colourful and hectic life helped to shape some of his most vibrant scenes and famous characters. His impoverished childhood - dogged by his father's debts and imprisonment in London - and years as a parliamentary journalist and legal clerk, brought Dickens first-hand experience of city life, enabling him to expose its realities, injustices and hardships in works such as Oliver Twist, Bleak House and Little Dorrit. He was often disillusioned with society and championed the welfare of the common man through social, education and housing reforms, which found some of their widest expression in over a hundred articles he wrote for his weekly magazine, Household Words. Father of ten children, Dickens struggled with an unhappy marriage, but he worked untiringly all his life, achieving great fame and fortune. His reading tours, which indulged his love of the stage, enabled him to reach his audiences in Britain and America, and his editing and writing have produced an abundant legacy which continues to inform and delight readers to this day. Illustrated throughout with letters, manuscripts, engravings and photographs, Elizabeth James's concise biography provides a revealing portrait of a prolific, talented and highly esteemed literary genius.