Charles Dickens
Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Letters of Charles Dickens
1938 saw the publication in three volumes of almost 6,000 of the letters, edited by Walter Dexter as part of the Nonesuch Edition of Dickens's Works. This was an expensively-priced edition limited to 877 copies, and was therefore not easily accessible to the ordinary reader unless he had either ample means or access to a university library. Moreover, Dexter's editorial practices were far from rigorous: there was hardly any annotation, and many of the letters were simply copied from previous editions rather than from the originals, with the inevitable result that the texts were not always accurate.