Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens (February 7, 1812 – June 9, 1870), pen-name “Boz”, was a cherished English novelist, whom many regard as the most important of the Victorian era. During his lifetime Dickens is viewed as a popular entertainer of fecund imagination, while later critics championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable characters, and his powerful social sensibilities. The popularity of his novels and short stories during his lifetime and to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none of them has ever gone out of print. Dickens played a major role in popularizing the serialized novel.

Quotations

• “Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.” — A Christmas Carol
• “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” — David Copperfield
• "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, then I have ever known." ----A Tale of Two Cities