ArtistBritish
Charles Dickens
0 active items
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, the second of eight children in a family that struggled persistently with debt. When he was twelve, his father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors' prison and the young Charles was put to work in a boot-blacking factory -- an experience of humiliation and abandonment that would shape his writing for the rest of his life and give his fiction its distinctive preoccupation with poverty, class and the vulnerability of children.
Dickens left school at fifteen and worked as a law clerk, then as a parliamentary reporter, before his journalism and sketches began attracting a wider readership. 'Sketches by Boz' (1836) and the serial publication of 'The Pickwick Papers' (1836-37) brought him immediate popular success on a scale that had no real precedent. He went on to publish fifteen novels, including 'Oliver Twist' (1838), 'Nicholas Nickleby' (1839), 'The Old Curiosity Shop' (1840-41), 'Martin Chuzzlewit' (1843-44), 'Dombey and Son' (1846-48), 'David Copperfield' (1849-50), 'Bleak House' (1852-53), 'Hard Times' (1854), 'Little Dorrit' (1855-57), 'A Tale of Two Cities' (1859), 'Great Expectations' (1860-61) and 'Our Mutual Friend' (1864-65), as well as five novellas, numerous short stories and vast quantities of journalism. He edited the weekly periodicals 'Household Words' and 'All the Year Round' for a combined twenty years.
His social criticism was concrete and specific: the workhouse system, the Court of Chancery, the Factory Acts, the inadequacy of schooling, the corruption of the legal profession and the callousness of financial institutions all came under sustained attack in his fiction. He campaigned publicly for children's rights and educational reform, and used his considerable public platform -- including packed reading tours in Britain and the United States -- to keep these causes in view. 'A Christmas Carol' (1843) became one of the most influential short works in English literary history, contributing directly to the modern conception of Christmas as a festival of charity and communal warmth.
Dickens died on 9 June 1870 at his home Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent, leaving 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' unfinished. He was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, against his expressed wish for a private funeral. He is survived by one of the most extensive literary legacies in the English language, with his novels continuously in print and adapted for stage, screen and radio across every generation since his death.
In the Auctionist database, the 12 items attributed to Charles Dickens are all books and collected editions, not visual art. The category is Collectibles. Lots include a first or early edition of 'David Copperfield' (Bradbury & Evans, London, 1850), the original three-volume 'Master Humphrey's Clock' (1840-41), 'Sketches of Young Ladies' (1838), 'The Pickwick Papers' (1837), 'The Chimes' (1845) and 'The Village Coquettes: A Comic Opera' (1836). Multiple lots of complete works in Swedish translation also appear (22 volumes, 1924-28). The highest recorded sale in the database is 984 SEK for 'Little Dorrit' (1857) and 'Our Mutual Friend' (1865) sold together. The primary market is Lawrences Auctioneers, with nine of the twelve items, alongside Stockholms Auktionsverk and Ekenbergs.