Charles John Huffam Dickens was born February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth and spent most of his childhood in London and Kent, both of which appear frequently in his novels. He started school at the age of nine, but his education was interrupted when his father, an amiable but careless minor civil servant, was imprisoned for debt in 1824. The boy was then forced to support himself by working in a
shoe-polish factory. From 1824 to 1826, Dickens again attended school. For the most part, however, he was self-educated. He read a lot of books and some of his favorites were by his favorite books were written by Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, and their influence can be discerned in Dickens's own novels. In 1827 Dickens took a job as a legal clerk. After learning shorthand, he began working as
a reporter in the courts and Parliament, perhaps developing the power of precise description that was to make his creative writing so remarkable.
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