This period was marked by a number of painful personal experiences: the death of his older sister, Fanny, in 1848; Catherine's nervous breakdown in 1850 after the birth of their daughter Dora Annie; the 1851 death of Dora; and the death of Dickens' father, John, in 1851. Yet during this period, Dickens achieved a major turning point in his writing: David Copperfield. Lawrence Kappel, a modern reviewer, crystallizes the achievement:
"For the first time, he conceived a hero who could survive in the midst of the problem-filled world of experience by using his artistic imagination, like Dickens himself. This autobiographical novel was a celebration of the artist's ability to cope with the world right in the center of it, as opposed to just surviving the world by retreating to some safe place at the edge of it, as Dickens' earlier heroes had done."
The next several years would bring the publication of Dickens' next three novels — Bleak House, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit — as well as the anguish and personal scandal of his involvement with Ellen Ternan and his divorce from Catherine. The novels were darker than anything he had previously written and their focus was mostly social criticism: Bleak House's criticism targeted the legal system (it may have been the first detective novel published in English), Hard Times hit the government, and Little Dorritt aimed at the problems of society's class structure. This period also saw Dickens become involved in more theatrical productions, start a weekly magazine, Household Words, and give public readings of his works.
