Charles John Huffam Dickens

Charles Dickens knew poverty firsthand. When his father was imprisoned for debt, twelve-year-old Charles was sent to work in a boot-blacking factory, pasting labels in a window where passersby could watch. The shame never left him; he rarely spoke of it but transmuted it into fiction that made the comfortable confront what they preferred not to see. He began as a journalist, mastered shorthand, reported on Parliament, and discovered he could make readers laugh and cry. The Pickwick Papers made him famous at 24. What followed was an avalanche: Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, novels that appeared in monthly installments, each ending on a cliffhanger that kept all England talking. His characters became more real than real people: Scrooge, Fagin, Miss Havisham, Mr. Micawber, Uriah Heep. He campaigned against debtors' prisons, workhouses, and the monstrous delays of Chancery.