The Project Gutenberg eBook, Life of Charles Dickens, by Frank Marzials

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Life of Charles Dickens

Author: Frank Marzials

Release Date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #16787]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS***

E-text prepared by Jason Isbell, Linda Cantoni, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)

Great Writers.

Edited by

Eric S. Robertson, M.A.,

Professor of English Literature and Philosophy in the University of
the Punjab, Lahore.

[Illustration: Portrait of Dickens]

LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS

by

FRANK T. MARZIALS

London
Walter Scott
24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row

1887

NOTE.

That I should have to acknowledge a fairly heavy debt to Forster's
"Life of Charles Dickens," and "The Letters of Charles Dickens,"
edited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, is almost a
matter of course; for these are books from which every present and
future biographer of Dickens must perforce borrow in a more or less
degree. My work, too, has been much lightened by Mr. Kitton's
excellent "Dickensiana."

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE

The lottery of education; Charles Dickens born February 7,
1812; his pathetic feeling towards his own childhood;
happy days at Chatham; family troubles; similarity between
little Charles and David Copperfield; John Dickens
taken to the Marshalsea; his character; Charles employed
in blacking business; over-sensitive in after years about
this episode in his career; isolation; is brought back into
family and prison circle; family in comparative comfort at
the Marshalsea; father released; Charles leaves the
blacking business; his mother; he is sent to Wellington
House Academy in 1824; character of that place of learning;
Dickens masters its humours thoroughly. 11

CHAPTER II.

Dickens becomes a solicitor's clerk in 1827; then a reporter;
his experiences in that capacity; first story published in
_The Old Monthly Magazine_ for January, 1834;