Dickens is probably the best-known and, to many people, the
greatest English novelist of the 19th century. A moralist,
satirist, and social reformer, Dickens crafted complex plots and
striking characters that capture the panorama of English
society. Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of John
and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay
Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found
himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the
exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren’s Blacking
Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. In 1849 he showed
a short account of his early years to his close friend John
Forster, revealing a story he never told his own family: the
shame-inducing months he spent, while his father was in a
debtor’s prison, as a 12-year-old “laboring hind” in a factory
that bottled shoe-blacking. In 1829 he became a free-lance
reporter at Doctor’s Commons Courts, and in 1830 he met and fell
in love with Maria Beadnell, the daughter