Charles Dickens

 Charles Dickens is a famous English writer of the 19th century. He is still popular today, and his books give more pleasure to readers than any other books of the 19th century.

Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, and he was the second of eight children in the family. His father was a clerk in the navy. The family later moved to London, and they lived in a poor part of London.

Charles was an unhappy little boy because his father spent many years in prison for debts. At that time the family was very poor, and Charles had no chance to go to school. He had to work at a factory.

After some years his father got out of prison, and Charles went to school again. At the age of fifteen he became an office boy and taught himself shorthand. In 1828 he began to work for various newspapers as a reporter.

In these years he began to write humorous stories and published them in a magazine. His most humorous book is Pickwick Papers, and it is famous all over the world.

Dickens fought for children's rights, against cheap child labour. In his book David Copperfield he describes the awful conditions in which thousands of children lived at that time. In his book Oliver Twist he showed how much children suffered in a workhouse. The hard life of Oliver Twist can't leave the reader indifferent.