Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens worked in a blacking factory at twelve when his father was jailed for debt, became a parliamentary reporter, and at twenty-four had London laughing at The Pickwick Papers. Fourteen novels followed, published in monthly parts to an audience that waited at the docks for the next number. David Copperfield reworks his own youth; Hard Times attacks the political economists; Little Dorrit returns to the debtors’ prison. He edited magazines, gave public readings that wore him out, and died at fifty-eight with a novel unfinished. No English novelist has been read by more people.