Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is among the most well-known authors of English literature, with his canon featuring a distinct “Dickensian” style. Many Dickens novels are in some respect autobiographical or influenced by his own experiences, such as his family’s struggles with debt and his father’s imprisonment in the Marshalsea Prison. He was forced to leave formal schooling early and spent time in the workhouse as a child, which left him with a life-long devotion to championing the cause of the poor and dispossessed. He became a strong supporter of court and prison reform, and would later become a notable philanthropist.

In his adult life, Dickens was a legal clerk and journalist before his career as a novelist began. While working as a journalist, Dickens began to write short stories known as “sketches” under the pen name “Boz,” and their popularity helped establish the style of his later serials. All his novels were serialized, with newspapers or magazines publishing one or a few chapters of a novel at regular intervals before the completed work appeared in book form. In addition, Dickens launched his own periodical called All the Year Round and a weekly magazine called Household Words. As an editor he championed the work of some other notable authors, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, whose North and South (1855) first appeared in installments in Household Words.

Dickens’s novels are known for their many small, interwoven stories, which together form a larger cohesive plot, and characters who form a tangled web of relationships. Dickens’s novels often rely on coincidence and satire, which the short, episodic structure of serial publishing enhanced. His novels often foreground themes related to the importance of moral conduct in a corrupt world, divine providence, and the problem of greed and unchecked wealth in Victorian England. Some of his most famous works include Oliver Twist (1838), Great Expectations (1861), David Copperfield (1850), and A Christmas Carol (1843).