Life and Background

Abstract

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. George III was still king, but from 1811 his son (later George IV) acted as Prince Regent on account of his father’s incapacity. We naturally think of Dickens as a Victorian, but it is important to remember that his childhood and early youth were spent in the pre-Victorian period, when manners and morals were very different from those customarily associated with the term ‘Victorian’, and that he was twenty-five when the Queen came to the throne. Dickens was born into a world without railways or the penny post; his lifetime was to witness more dramatic changes in society and human life than had ever taken place in the history of the world, and many of these changes are vividly recorded in the novels he published between 1836 and 1870.