Charles Dickens lived a very intense life. He was born in Landport, near Portsea in the south of England, in 1812.

His family was a large one. The boy was twelve when he was withdrawn from school, in 1824, and sent to work in a shoe-blacking factory in London for a few months to help his father, imprisoned for debts. This unpleasant experience was never forgotten and marked the beginning of Dickens's social commitment and identification with the poor and the oppressed, which are constantly present in his fiction.

At the age of sixteen Charles Dickens was apprenticed in an attorney's office to study law, but soon gave up and learned shorthand to become a reporter in the courts of law. These experiences provided the material for the description of lawyers and their world in many of his novels.

He was only twenty-one when his first fictional work, Sketches by Boz (1836), appeared in instalments and had an enthusiastic reception from both critics and pub1ic. The publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-7) increased Charles Dickens' popularity and brought in handsome profits, which enabled him to marry.

A frantic career as a novelist developed which was to continue all his life and which Dickens managed to combine with several other activities.