Summary on Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s own childhood began on 7 February 1812, a few hours after his mother, Elizabeth, had returned from a dance. His father a kind-hearted, hospitable and generous man worked as a clerk at the Navy pay office. Charles was the second of eight children. When Charles was two years old, his father was transferred to London where the family lived in Norfolk Street. Three years later, they settled at Chatham in Kent, where Charles spent some of the happiest days of his life. Dickens was no sentimentalist when it came to depicting childhood. In 1822, when Charles was ten the family moved again to Camden Town in London. John Dickens’ debts had become so severe that all the household goods were sold and there were no money left to educate Charles. Unable to pay his debts, John Dickens along with his family was taken to the Marshalea, the debtors’ prison. Two weeks earlier Dickens had begun work at Warren’s Blacking Factory. It was the most traumatic event of his life and the most shameful as he called it ”the secret agony of my soul”. Six months later, the family’s fortune revived – a small inheritance paid off most of the debts – and they got out of prison. Charles’ father removed him from the warehouse and sent him to a nearby private school, Wellington House Academy. Three years later, 15 years old Dickens left Wellington House and, through his mother found a job as a solicitors’ clerk in Gray’s Inn. He was not happy with the law and having no intention of remaining a clerk all his life, he begun teaching himself shorthand, thinking of journalism as a career. He started work as a freelance reporter in Doctor’s Commons (a court). Dickens quickly educated himself. His time spent there was the most useful of his life. At 18 years old Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, the pretty daughter of a Lombard Street banker. He courted her for four years. She teased and flirted with him for a year and then she suddenly refused to see him again.