Happiness

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness.  

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

-       Dickens[1]

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[1] Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Landport, Hampshire, to John and Elizabeth Barrow Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy pay office, a job that paid well. But he could be over-generous to friends in need, and so often had financial troubles. In 1814 the family moved to London, and then to a large home in Chatham, Kent County. Charles learned to love reading, and studied at a school run by William Giles. He and his siblings enjoyed playing creative games and putting on small plays.  

When Charles was 12, his father’s financial difficulties came to a crisis. The whole family except Charles went to live in Marshalsea debtor’s prison. Charles was considered old enough to work, and was sent to a blacking factory in Hungerford Market, London. He continued studying, at Wellington House Academy, London, and then at Mr. Dawson’s school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk. 

Charles began to write, first as a shorthand reporter at Doctor’s Commons, and then as a fiction writer. He was skilled at both. His fiction began with Sketches by Boz in 1833; The Pickwick Papers followed in 1836. In the 1840s he founded the magazine Master Humphrey’s Clock, featuring characters he had already introduced; he did all the writing and editing. At the same time, he was editing The London Daily News.

In 1836 Charles married Catherine, a daughter of his friend George Hogarth. But he was especially fond of Catherine’s sister Mary, who moved into their house and then died in 1837. Dickens requested that he be buried next to her when he died and wore Mary’s ring all his life. Another of Catherine’s sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Despite his wandering affections, Dickens and Catherine had 10 children. But Charles’ long liaison with actress Ellen Ternan in the late 1850s may have been too much for the relationship; he and Catherine separated in 1858.

In the late 1830s Dickens’ first novels began to appear, arriving in monthly installments. They were immensely popular. Oliver Twist (1837-39) was first, followed by Nicholas Nickelby (1838-39) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41). About this time, Dickens began using his considerable influence to campaign against some of the social evils of the time. He began to travel extensively, giving talks, reading, and writing pamphlets, plays, and letters. In the 1850s he was founding editor of Household World and its successor All the Year Round (1859-70). In 1844-45 he lived in Italy, Switzerland and Paris. He gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States in 1858-68.

Dickens never gave up writing novels. Among his later works are David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860-61). From 1860 on he lived at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent. When he died there in 1870 he was still working on the novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood; it was published later that year.  (Source: dickens-literature.com)