Charles Dickens was twelve years old when he was forced to paste labels on pots of boot blacking in a factory on Hungerford Stairs, a job that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Born on the 7th of February 1812 in Portsmouth, he was the second of eight children in a family that lived beyond its means. His father, John Dickens, was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office who was eventually imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark in 1824. While his father and younger siblings lived inside the prison, the twelve-year-old Charles boarded with a family friend, Elizabeth Roylance, and worked ten-hour days for six shillings a week. The factory window looked out onto the street, where small audiences would gather to watch the boys at work, adding a public humiliation to his private misery. This period of his childhood, which he later described as the most traumatic of his life, became the foundation for his lifelong interest in social reform and the plight of the poor. He never forgot the feeling of being cast away, and it fueled the righteous indignation that would drive his writing. The experience also shaped his view of women, as his mother Elizabeth refused to immediately support his removal from the factory, a decision that left a lasting scar on his psyche. The prison itself, with its grim reality, would later become the setting for his novel Little Dorrit, and the characters he met there, such as the kind-hearted Archibald Russell, inspired figures like the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop.
The Rise of a Literary Phenomenon
The introduction of the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode of The Pickwick Papers in 1836 transformed a struggling serial into a publishing phenomenon that defined the Victorian era. Before Weller, the first few episodes of The Pickwick Papers had been unsuccessful, but the Cockney character's wit and charm sparked a craze that led to unprecedented merchandise, including Pickwick cigars, playing cards, and even Sam Weller boot polish. Dickens, who was only twenty-four at the time, had hired the illustrator Phiz to replace the original artist Robert Seymour, who had committed suicide after the second instalment. The success of the book made Dickens an international celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. He pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, publishing his novels in monthly or weekly instalments, which allowed him to evaluate his audience's reaction and modify his plot and character development accordingly. For instance, when his wife's podiatrist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. The format also meant that masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up a new class of readers. This method of publication kept readers in suspense with cliffhanger endings, and it became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The phenomenon was so significant that it defined a new category of entertainment, as noted by critics who argued that literature was not a big enough category for Pickwick. The character of Sam Weller became so iconic that his one-liners, known as Wellerisms, entered the popular lexicon, and the book itself is considered by some to be the most important single novel of the Victorian era.