The young Charles John Huffman Dickens (his full name) spent the first four years of his life in different places following the family transfers , showing already in early adolescence a deep passion for reading. His favourite works ranges from Elizabethan drama to the novels of Defoe, Fielding and Smollett, the "Arabian Nights" to "Don Quixote" by Cervantes.
In 1824 his father was arrested for debt: he was sent to prison where he remained only a few months until a small inheritance through the family enabled them to pay their debts. In those dark months the twelve year old Charles will know the hard work of the laborer, the exploitation of minors (real scandal of England at the time) and the brutality of some representatives of the lower classes. Working conditions were appalling: thrown into a factory like a dirty rat-infested barracks, together with other children of the slums pasted labels on bottles of shoe polish.
These are experiences that will remain forever in the soul like a wound never healed and that will be fruitful "humus" for his inexhaustible literary invention.
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Since 1825 Charles could go back to school at the Wellington Academy, Hampstead Road, but he must leave school after two years because his father could no longer afford the tuition fee.
In May he began to work as a messenger at a law firm and spend the next two years as a parliamentary reporter , until in 1829 he got the job of journalist at the Law Courts of Doctors which he shared with his cousin Thomas Charlton.
The following year, the nineteen year older Charles fell in love with the young daughter of a banker, but both for reasons of social inequality and the opposition of her parents, the engagement dissolved three years later with a break that will leave more of a signs in the mind of Charles.
He met Catherine Hogarth in 1835, married her the next year. Significant the relationship between the writer and the two sister in-laws, Mary (whose death at the age of 16 in 1837 caused Charles an infinite sorrow and severe psychological crisis) and Georgina, 12 years younger than Catherine, who later went into the family of the writer gradually replacing the older sister in the administration of the house and did not leave even when the couple obtained a legal separation, tolerating the new love and the new relationship with Ellen Ternan.
Those who read the novels of Dickens found hidden in some female characters, the same characteristics of these unusual cognate.
On January 6th 1837 the first of eight children was born, but 1837 is the year of the first great success with both the files in episodes of "Oliver Twist" that the "Pickwick Papers" (later to become the famous "Circle Pickwick "): two masterpieces that will remain forever in the history of world literature.
This is an amazing creative period for Dickens during which the writer creates his major works, culminating with the publication of the sublime "David Copperfield".
His fame eventually spread in Europe and in America. In 1842 he made a long journey in the United States, where among other things, affected the prison system.
In July 1844 arrived in Italy and settled in Genoa with the entire family until April 1845. In 1846 he visited Switzerland and France and even in these cases confirmed its special attention to the detention facilities, their organization and purpose, a sign of great social sensitivity undoubtedly matured as a result of childhood experiences.
In May 1855, his life took an abrupt change due to the meeting with Ellen Ternan, a love that will push him to leave his family and start a new life with her. Despite the still young age of Charles Dickens he was almost a national glory: he was always engaged in public readings of his work both at home and abroad .
At the end of 1867 Dickens began a new journey in America for a tour of readings in December but he was seriously ill, so as to recover . In 1869 he began to write his latest work, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," unfortunately remained unfinished.
His physical condition was now critical.
He suffered a brain hemorrhage that led to his death the next day: it was June 9th, 1870.June 14th will be buried with honor in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
The novels of Dickens, but with different results, are one of the high points of the social novel of the nineteenth century a mixture of classical and journalistic prose narration with a sharp eye sensitive to social realities and needs of the reader. His descriptions of environments, situations and characters are a fresco crucial to understand the English society of the nineteenth century.
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