Young Charles Dickens's happy childhood came to a sudden end when his father was jailed for debt and, aged 12, he was sent to work in a factory making shoe polish. By his mid twenties, he was on the verge of becoming the most popular novelist the world has ever known, creating hundreds of unforgettable characters, but Charles never forgot his days working alongside poor and abandoned orphans. Andrew Billen tells the gripping life story of Charles Dickens, explaining how it fed into his work, and how, along the way, he invented the modern idea of Christmas.
This is Book 12 in the Great Victorians Series. See all Great Victorians books here.
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Andrew Billen is a feature writer and chief TV critic on The Times. He previously worked for the Sheffield Star, The Observer and the London Evening Standard and was a television and theatre critic for the New Statesman. He has written two children's biographies for Short Books. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two daughters.
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