Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Story of Little Nell From Old Curiosity Shop
Charles dickens was born near Portsmouth, England, February 7, 1812. He early developed a fondness for reading, and when only nine years old had read Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Robinson Crusoe, and several of the early English novels.
When he was ten, his father, who was a clerk in the Navy, lost his employment, and was imprisoned for debt. The boy was placed in a blacking factory, where he pasted labels on the bottles of blacking. After a time his father, released from prison, secured an engagement as reporter on the Morning Herald, and Charles was again sent to school. A few years later he entered a lawyer's office as clerk, but he had no taste for this work, and taught himself shorthand, with the idea of becoming a journalist. At the age of seventeen he became a reporter at Doctors' Commons, a court building of London, and at twenty-two he was employed as reporter on the staff of the London Morning Chron icle. His work required him to travel all over England, collecting items of news and writing up such incidents as are now telegraphed to the papers daily by local reporters. As there were no railroads at the time, he went by stage-coach from place to place, and in this way he mingled with the people and saw every phase of life. While thus en gaged he began to contribute original papers, under the signature Boz, to the Evening Chronicle. They were afterwards collected and pub lished separately as Sketches by Boz. In 1836 the Pickwick Papers appeared. These brought him fame and fortune, and he soon became the most popular writer of English fiction.
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