Dickens experienced poverty in early life which he was later to depict in his novels David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. Entirely self-taught, he began his career in writing as a House of Commons debates reporter for the Morning Chronicle in 1835, although he had written some fiction as early as 1833 in the form of short stories and essays for periodicals. Many of his short stories were collected as Sketches by Boz and pubished in 1836-37. He followed this with the Pickwick Papers, or more exactly, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, also in 1836-37. The latter was a huge success and made Dickens the most popular writer of his time in England. This was followed by Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). He travelled to America in 1842 and on his return to England, published American Notes, popular in England, but not very well received in America due to the criticisms it contained. In 1843, he published Martin Chuzzlewit and A Christmas Carol, followed by The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man, between 1844 and 1847. His Pictures From Italy followed his long journey to Italy in 1844 and while in Switzerland in 1846, he wrote Dombey and Son. In 1850 he published David Copperfield and over the next few years produced some of his finest work in Bleak House (1852), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1856), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860), and Our Mutual Friend (1864). He died in 1870 while working on his next novel, Edwin Drood. Besides his huge output of novels, Dickens wrote numerous short stories, contributed to various magazines, some of which he founded and edited, and produced a number of critical works. |
