Biography Of Charles Dickens :: essays research papers

narration of Charles monsterThere is something roughly Charles Dickens imaginative power that defiesexplanation in purely biographical terms. Nevertheless, his biography shows thesource of that power and is the best set up to begin to define it.The second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens, Charles was born onFebruary 7, 1812, near Portsmouth on Englands south coast. At that magazine JohnDickens was stationed in Portsmouth as a clerk in the Navy grant Office. Thefamily was of lower-middle-class origins, John having come from servants andElizabeth from minor bureaucrats. Dickens stick was vivacious and unselfish buthad an unfortunate tendency to live beyond his means. his mother was accessible and rather inept in practical matters. Dickens later utilise hisfather as the basis for Mr. Micawber and portrayed is mother as Mrs. Nickleby inA Tale of Two Cities.After a transfer to capital of the United Kingdom in 1814, the family moved to Chatham, nearRochester, three years later. Dickens was about five at the time, and for thenext five years his life was pleasant. Taught to make by his mother, he devouredhis fathers small collection of classics, which included Shakespeare, Cervantes,Defoe, Smollet, Fielding, and Goldsmith. These left a permanent mark on hisimagination their effect on his prowess was quite important. dickens also went tosome performances of Shakespeare and formed a womb-to-tomb attachment to the theater.He attended school during this period and showed himself to be a rather solitary,observant, good-natured child with some talent for comic routines, which hisfather encouraged. In retrospect Dickens looked upon these years as a soma ofgolden age. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers, is in part an attempt torecreate their perfect nature it rejoices in innocence and the youthful spirit,and its happiest scenes take place in that precise geographical area.In the light of the familys move back to London, where pecuniarydifficulties overtook t he Dickenss, the time in Chatham must have seemedglorious indeed. The family moved into the tawdry suburb of Camden Town, andDickens was taken out of school and set to lowly jobs about the household. Intime, to help augment the family income, Dickens was given a job in a blackingfactory among rough companions. At the time his father was imprisoned for debt,but was released three months later by a small legacy. Dickens related to hisfriend, John Forster, long afterward, that he felt a deep sense of abandonmentat this time the major themes of his novels can be traced to this period. Hissympathy for the victimized, his fascination with prisons and money, the desire