
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.
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
Novel

Novel · 1861
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Great Expectations
1861 · Bildungsroman · Social novel
A blacksmith's boy is given a fortune and loses his manners along with his gratitude.

Novel · 1853
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Bleak House
1853 · Social novel · Detective fiction
A lawsuit that eats generations, told in two alternating voices.

Novel · 1859
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
A Tale of Two Cities
1859 · Historical fiction
London and Paris, and a man who dies in another's place.
