Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English novelist, journalist, editor, social critic, and one of the central figures of Victorian literature. His major works include Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend. Dickens became famous for his serial storytelling, comic invention, memorable characters, social criticism, and extraordinary ability to combine entertainment with moral urgency.Dickens's fiction repeatedly returns to poverty, childhood, debt, imprisonment, education, labour, hypocrisy, bureaucracy, cruelty, and the failures of respectable society. In Nicholas Nickleby, he attacks abusive schools, predatory finance, family betrayal, and the social ease with which children and the vulnerable can be turned into commodities. For readers of classic English fiction, Victorian literature, social novels, literary realism, and dark comic storytelling, Dickens remains indispensable: popular, theatrical, sentimental, savage, and still one of the most recognisable voices in the English novel.
