Charles Dickens

The following is back and front book copy I wrote for a copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. An independent publisher meant to publish classics for schools but couldn’t afford to carry it out. But I had fun researching and writing.

A terrible disposable camera photo of the Dickens state at Madame Tousaud’s in London (2004)

Charles Dickens Biography (1812–1870)

The second of six children, Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, a southern coastal English town, in 1812. His father was a clerk for the navy, and the family moved frequently. When he was two years old, they moved to London and stayed two years. They then moved to the village Chatham, where he eventually went to school and enjoyed his studies. When he was ten, they moved back to London.

Dickens’s parents struggled to retain middle class status. In London, his parents were poor and neglected his education entirely but sent his older sister Fanny to the Royal Academy of Music, triggering his jealousy. When he was twelve, his parents were so desperately poor that they sent him to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he put the lids and labels on containers of shoe blacking. A few days later, his father went to Marshalsea Prison for debt.

This humiliating experience haunted Dickens and his writing for the rest of his life. He visited and wrote about prisons and did much charitable work, such as help his friend Angela Burdett-Couts run a residence for homeless…