Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812-June 9, 1870) was the second of eight children born to Elizabeth and John Dickens, improvident and irresponsible parents who (without deep regret, it seems) gave their offspring poor starts in the world. Without actually hating his parents, Dickens early saw them for what they were. He was particularly critical of his mother, a self-centered woman short on affection for Charles: For example, she wanted to prolong his stay at the shoe blacking warehouse where he had been sent, at the age of twelve, to help support the family. In later life, Charles' own generosity and sense of decency prompted him to assist his parents, who continued in their improvident ways.
Partly from natural inclination and partly by way of taking refuge from an irregular and problematical family life, the young boy immersed himself in the world of imagination. He read Shakespeare, Addison, Fielding, Goldsmith, and several other authors avidly. He was also fond of reciting, acting, and theatre-going, activities in which his father encouraged him. He also wandered happily along the Thames and through the towns and nearby countryside of Kent (England's warmest and most serene region), where the Dickenses resided from 1817 to 1822. Dickens' affection for Chatham, Rochester, and other towns in Kent ripened over the years, and his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (left unfinished), is set in Rochester and contains some of the author's most vivid and evocative writing.
Both his reading and his recitals, as well as his acting, served to educate Dickens for what would later become his career as a writer with a flair for the dramatic speech and dramatic incident. As most of his early reading was the works of eighteenth-century writers, it is not surprising that the values and attitudes expressed (by characters and author alike) in his own novels are essentially the same as those found in Fielding, Goldsmith, and Richardson. Those writers believed that human nature was essentially good and that this goodness was actually enhanced by the spontaneous and enthusiastic public expression of that very belief.
One day, as Charles and his father were walking just outside Rochester, his father pointed out the local mansion, Gad's Hill Place, and suggested that if the boy made the most of his talents he might someday be able to live in such a house. This is a classic example of a small, seemingly inconsequential moment that later proves to be highly significant. Gad's Hill Place became an ideal for the boy, and one that helped him associate talent with financial success. In 1856, when Dickens was forty-four, he was able to buy the house; he loved it and never moved again.
In 1822, John Dickens, then a senior clerk in the navy pay office, was transferred from Chatham to London. There, continuing to spend more than he earned, he soon became hopelessly insolvent. In 1824, Charles was taken out of school and sent to work, pasting labels on pots of shoe blacking. Two weeks later, John Dickens was jailed at Marshalsea, a debtors' prison. The humiliation and despair of 1824 left permanent emotional scars. However, what English literature was to gain from this experience when Dickens became a writer was an unprecedentedly vivid and varied presentation of childhood as vulnerability. In fact, Dickens must be credited as the first serious English novelist to deal extensively with the victimized child, a theme that has continued to produce masterpieces in fiction and film.
Bleak House centers around children and very young people, and, at the same time, around the law and its courts. Dickens went directly from childhood into the world of law. In 1827, he obtained employment as an office boy for Charles Molloy, a London solicitor; several weeks later, he was hired as a clerk for the law office of Ellis and Blackmore. Dissatisfied with these dull and low-paid jobs, he learned shorthand and, late in 1828, he became a shorthand writer for Doctors' Commons, another institution of the law. Intermittently, he also did law reporting for the Metropolitan Police Courts. In his spare time, he read widely and happily at the British Museum.
In 1829, Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, an attractive and vivacious but rather snobbish and hard-hearted banker's daughter. To better his chance with her, he began looking for a better paying and more prestigious position. In 1832, he went strongly into journalism, becoming a Parliamentary reporter for the Mirror of Parliament and a general reporter for the True Sun. Maria Beadnell found Dickens somewhat interesting but never took him seriously as a suitor. After four years, Dickens gave up on her, but the loss was a crushing and long-enduring sorrow. Dickens' best biographer, Edgar Johnson, says that "All the imagination, romance, passion, and aspiration of his nature she had brought into flower and she would never be separated from." Knowing that his failure to win Maria was largely due to his low social standing and poor financial prospects, Dickens became more determined than ever to make a name for himself and a fortune to go with it.
Prospects brightened almost at once. He had been writing some sketches of London life, and several of these were accepted and published by the Monthly Magazine and the Evening Chronicle. In March 1834, Dickens landed a job as a reporter for the important Whig (liberal) newspaper, the Morning Chronicle. Journalism kept him in practice with the written word and forced him to observe closely and report accurately; it was excellent training for a man who saw more and more clearly that he wanted to make his mark in literature. Early in 1836, Dickens' collected pieces were published as Sketches by Boz. The book was very favorably reviewed, sold well, and went through three editions by 1837.
