The success of the Sketches by Boz had sharpened Dickens's confidence in the future and sufficiently improved his income to allow him to consider marriage. On April 2, 1836, two days after the first of the Pickwick Papers went on sale, Dickens and Catherine Hogarth were married. The bride was the oldest daughter of George Hogarth, the editor of the Evening Chronicle, an affiliate of the newspaper for which Dickens wrote. The couple had ten children, but after twenty-two years the marriage ended in dissension and separation.
When the success of the Pickwick Papers was assured, the star reporter resigned from the Morning Chronicle, but within a few months he became editor of a new periodical, Bentley's Miscellany. The February 1837 issue began the serialization of Oliver Twist, or, the Parish Boy's Progress by Boz, even though the busy editor was still at work on the Pickwick Papers. Before Oliver Twist had all appeared, several numbers of Dickens's next novel, Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), had been printed. Oliver Twist was completed in September 1838 and was issued in book form before the end of the year, although serial publication ran until March 1839.
Dickens gave up the editorship of Bentley's Miscellany after two years, but his astounding literary productivity went on with few intermissions until the day of his death. His many books followed one another at regular intervals: The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), Barnaby Rudge (1841), American Notes (1842), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), Dombey and Son (1846-48), David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-61), Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870 — unfinished).
