Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 9, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted.

003

THE WORLD OF CHARLES DICKENS AND A CHRISTMAS CAROL, THE CHIMES AND THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

1811 Jane Austen publishes Sense and Sensibility, arguably the first modern English novel.
1812 Charles John Huffam Dickens is born at Portsmouth to John and Elizabeth (née Barrow) Dickens. The government orders a group of Luddites, an organized band of laborers opposed to the industrialized machinery that threatens to replace them, to be shot down.
1817 The Dickens family moves to Chatham, in Kent. Charles begins reading the books in his father’s library; his favorites include the works of Miguel de Cervantes, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett.
1822 The Dickens family moves again, this time to Camden, in North London. Charles quickly and fastidiously learns the landscape of London, an invaluable resource for his later writing.
1824 Charles is sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, a manufacturer of bootblacking. His father is arrested for debt and imprisoned for three months, and while the rest of the family stays with John Dickens in prison, Charles lodges elsewhere and continues pasting labels onto bottles of blacking at Warren’s.
1825 John Dickens retires on a naval pension, and Charles attends Wellington House Academy, a private school where he wins a prize in Latin.
1827 Dickens becomes a clerk in a solicitor’s office.
1829 After learning shorthand, Dickens establishes himself as a reporter for the law courts, Parliament, and various London newspapers. He meets Maria Beadnell and falls in love with her.
1831 Dickens joins the journalistic staff of the Mirror of Parliament; he transcribes speeches by the members of Parliament on such topics as factory conditions, penal reform, education reform, the Poor Law Commission, and the First Reform Bill of 1832.
1833 After four arduous years, Dickens’s affair with Beadnell dis solves in the face of her family’s disapproval. He publishes his first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” in the Monthly Magazine. The British Parliament passes the Factory Act, which regulates child labor and forces children to attend school until age thirteen.
1834 Dickens becomes a journalist for the Morning Chronicle, a job that requires frequent travel and attendance at political meetings. He continues to publish stories and sketches in periodicals. The Poor Law Amendment Act ends out-of-door relief (aid given to the poor in their own homes) and compels those in need of assistance to enter workhouses, where conditions are very harsh.
1835 Dickens becomes engaged to Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle.
1836 Dickens writes in several different genres and achieves significant literary success. Adopting the pseudonym “Boz,” based on his pronunciation as a young child of Moses as “Boses,” Dickens publishes in volume form Sketches by Boz, a collection of his earlier writings. He marries Catherine Hogarth; the couple eventually will have ten children. Dickens becomes intensely and unceasingly prolific, continuing to write feverishly throughout his life. He begins The Pickwick Papers, his first novel, which sets the precedent of serialization that he will follow for nearly all of his novels. He meets his future biographer John Forster.
1837 Victoria is crowned queen. Dickens becomes the editor of the new magazine Bentley’s Miscellany and begins publishing installments of his novel Oliver Twist in the journal.
1838 Oliver Twist is published in three volumes, while the serial publication in Bentley’s continues. The novel is extremely popular, and three dramatic versions are produced in London theaters in the winter of 1838-1839.
1839 Nicholas Nickleby is published. Because of tension with Richard Bentley, Dickens resigns his editorship and devotes himself fully to writing. The Dickens family moves to Devonshire Terrace.
1840 Dickens establishes his own weekly miscellany, Master Humphrey’s Clock, and writes all the content himself. After eighteen months, sales fall off, and he is forced to abandon the periodical. To generate capital, he quickly begins serial publication of The Old Curiosity Shop.
1841 Dickens publishes Barnaby Rudge. He publicly denounces the child-labor laws and abysmal factory conditions of the times; he lambastes the Tories, who oppose humane labor laws.
1842 Accompanied by Catherine, an exhausted Dickens travels to America, where he is lionized. His popularity there falters upon the publication of American Notes, a chronicle that records his negative reactions to the United States.
1843 Dickens publishes the most famous and best-loved of his annual Christmas books, A Christmas Carol, which had taken him only a matter of weeks to write.
1844 The Dickens family relocates to Genoa, Italy, where they remain for a year. The Chimes is published.
1845 In December Dickens signs on as the first editor of the Daily News but soon leaves because of disagreements with the publishers. The family moves to Switzerland, then Paris, and remains abroad for six months. The Cricket on the Hearth is published.
1846 Dickens publishes another Christmas book, The Battle of Life.
1847 Upon his return to London, Dickens helps Miss Angela Burdett- Coutts start a home for reformed prostitutes, which he later runs. William Makepeace Thackeray begins publishing Vanity Fair in monthly parts.
1848 Dombey and Son heralds Dickens’s more mature and decidedly dark period, which over the next two decades yields such major works as David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). Dickens begins to run a private theater, in which he acts and performs for charity. His company of amateurs includes painter Augustus Egg, who depicts scenes from novels by Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, and other writers. The Christmas book The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain is published.
1850 Realism becomes a conscious agenda among artists working in media such as painting, literature, and theater.