Biography charles dickens ppt files
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens is one of the greatest novelists in the English language. He wrote about the real world of Victorian England and many of his characters were not rich, middle-class ladies and gentlemen, but poor and hungry people. Though he did not believe in revolutionary action, he was on the side of the people with all his heart. He wanted what the people wanted.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth on the southern coast of England. His father was a clerk at the office of a large naval station there, and the family lived on his small salary. There were eight children
in the family, so life
was hard. Charles went
to school and his
teachers thought
he was very clever.
The happy days of childhood came to an end when the father was moved to London. Charles was the eldest son, but he was not sent to school again. The father made no plans for the education of his children. He was an easy-going man who always spent more money than he could afford. Soon he lost his job and was imprisoned for debt. The family went to prison too. Only Charles didn’t go to it. He worked in a factory where he washed bottles for shoe-polish and putting labels on them.
The long working hours at the factory, the poor food, the rough boys and their treatment of him… Every night, after work, he walked four miles back to his room. Charles hated it and never forgot the experience. He later described this unhappy time in many novels, especially in David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.
The young journalist
Dickens left school when he was twelve. He had to continue his education by himself. His father sent him to a lawyer’s office to study law. He didn’t stay there long. Instead of law he studied shorthand and found a job as a newspaper reporter. He did his work so well that he was considered to be the best parliamentary reporter in London. The work of a reporter led him to journalism, and journalism led to novel-writing.
Dickens’s first efforts at writing were little stories for magazines about the ordinary Londoners he saw. The stories were funny street sketches. One day he dropped a sketch he had written in the letter-box of a publishing house. It was printed, and the young author followed it up with other sketches which he signed Boz. Sketches by Bozappeared in various magazines (only twenty-four years of age).
Dickens �the novelist
Success came early to Dickens; he was twenty-five when his first novel, Pickwick Papers, appeared. Within a few months Pickwick was the rage and Dickens the most popular author of the day. Having discovered, almost accidentally, his ability as a novelist, Dickens devoted himself to literary work. His next novels were Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickelby.
The years between 1844 and 1848 Dickens travelled in Italy, France and Switzerland, because he found it easier to concentrate on English problems from afar. There he worked hard at the novel Dombey and Son. When back in England, he continued writing novels without break. His genius was at its height; his best novels were written at this time. With great energy he began to give dramatic readings from his own works in various towns all over Britain. His reading was so wonderful that people came in thousands to hear the warm-hearted beloved writer.
Other most popular works are:
- Barnaby Rudge;
- The Old Curiosity Shop;
- American Notes;
- The Christmas Books;
- Bleak House;
- A Tale of Two Cities.
Personal unhappiness
Dickens and Catherine Hogarth were married in April of 1836. They had 10 children, but they didn’t have a happy family life. Charles was successful in his work but not at home, and his wife left him.
Charles Dickens is famous for having used everyman as a hero. No one has conveyed the spirit of 19th century English life better than he. His world was a hurrying breathless city of workers, sailors and the lower middle class, who lived where there was ‘nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets.’
Presentation was made by Kate Tykhonova
Form 10
School 2