Charles Dickens (1812-70) had a happy childhood until age twelve
when, due to his father's confinement in debtors' prison, he was
forced to leave school to work in a factory. He taught himself
shorthand and worked as a parliamentary reporter until his writing
career took off with the publication of Sketches by Boz (1836) and
The Pickwick Papers (1837). As a novelist and magazine editor,
Dickens had a long run of serialized success, including Oliver
Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1850), A Tale of Two Cities
(1859), and Great Expectations (1861). In later years, ill health
slowed him down, but he continued his popular dramatic readings
from his fiction to an adoring public, which included Queen
Victoria. At his death, The Mystery of Edwin Drood remained
unfinished.
Frederick Busch (1941-2006) was the author of eighteen works of
fiction, including Closing Arguments, Girls, and The Mutual Friend,
a novel about Charles Dickens. The winner of numerous awards, he
was the Fairchild Professor of Literature at Colgate
University.
Jane Smiley is an American novelist. In addition to her many novels
(including Ten Days in the Hills, Horse Heaven, and A Thousand
Acres), she wrote a short biography of Charles Dickens for the
Penguin Lives series (2001).
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