Charles Dickens
Victorian English novelist of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, and a campaigner for social reform Show bio
Bio
Charles Dickens left school at twelve to paste labels on pots of boot polish. He worked ten-hour days there while his father was held in a debtors' prison. Dickens later wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age."
He began as a journalist, then broke through with The Pickwick Papers, a story sold in installments. Dickens borrowed the name of a boy from the factory, Bob Fagin, for his novel Oliver Twist.
He reached poor people who could not read, each paying a halfpenny to hear an episode. Dickens, once a boy "so easily cast away," fought hard for children's rights and education.