His passion for the uncanny began in his teens, when he pored over tales of phantoms, murder and cannibalism. They can do anything they like.”įascinated by all things paranormal, Dickens allegedly belonged to London’s famous Ghost Club, an organization that investigates “ghosts and hauntings” to this day. “The Spirits have done it all in one night. A great inventor of zany pet monikers, Dickens dubbed Kate “Lucifer Box” because of her stormy temper, called Francis “Chickenstalker” in honor of a character from one of his books and gave Edward the lifelong epithet “Plorn.” He named some of his brood, including Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens and Henry Fielding Dickens, after his favorite writers. “It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”ĭickens and his wife Catherine, the daughter of his onetime coworker at the Morning Chronicle newspaper, had 10 children together, one of whom died in infancy. He later landed a job at a legal firm before covering the House of Commons as a reporter. When his father was sent to debtors’ prison, 12-year-old Boz (Charles’ childhood nickname) helped support his family by pasting labels on shoe polish bottles in a factory. Born in 1812 to middle-class parents in the English city of Portsmouth, Charles Dickens-like several of his protagonists-entered the workforce at a young age.
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