The Immortals
Painted portrait of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Novelist · English · Victorian

Charles Dickens

1812–1870

London itself is a character with a nervous system. He wrote his own abandonment into every orphan he made.

BildungsromanDetective fictionHistorical fictionNovelSatireSocial novelSocial realismChildhoodClassFogGuiltInheritance

The life

At twelve he was pasting labels in a blacking factory while his father sat in debtors' prison. He never forgot the shame and never stopped writing about abandoned children. Later: public readings that exhausted him, a separated marriage, a serial novelist's ferocious deadlines, and a death at fifty-eight with Edwin Drood unfinished.

The writings

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