His early experiences, and the hardships of others he saw around him, had a major influence on his thoughts and in time writing, and his sympathy for the underdog never wavered. Three years later he was employed as a junior clerk in a lawyer’s office. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-scale book).īorn in Portsmouth in 1812, Charles Dickens was denied a formal education by his family’s poverty – his impecunious father served time in a debtor’s prison – and started work in a blacking factory at the age of twelve.
Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen, among others, to say nothing of a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified to produce a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812.
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