E-text prepared by Jason Isbell, Linda Cantoni, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) Great Writers. Edited by Eric S. Robertson, M.A., Professor of English Literature and Philosophy in the University of the Punjab, Lahore. [Illustration: Portrait of Dickens] LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS by FRANK T. MARZIALS London Walter Scott 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row 1887 NOTE. That I should have to acknowledge a fairly heavy debt to Forster's "Life of Charles Dickens," and "The Letters of Charles Dickens," edited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, is almost a matter of course; for these are books from which every present and future biographer of Dickens must perforce borrow in a more or less degree. My work, too, has been much lightened by Mr. Kitton's excellent "Dickensiana." CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The lottery of education; Charles Dickens born February 7, 1812; his pathetic feeling towards his own childhood; happy days at Chatham; family troubles; similarity between little Charles and David Copperfield; John Dickens taken to the Marshalsea; his character; Charles employed in blacking business; over-sensitive in after years about this episode in his career; isolation; is brought back into family and prison circle; family in comparative comfort at the Marshalsea; father released; Charles leaves the blacking business; his mother; he is sent to Wellington House Academy in 1824; character of that place of learning; Dickens masters its humours thoroughly. 11 CHAPTER II. Dickens becomes a solicitor's clerk in 1827; then a reporter; his experiences in that capacity; first story published in _The Old Monthly Magazine_ for January, 1834; writes more "Sketches"; power of minute observation thus early shown; masters the writer's art; is paid for his contributions to the _Chronicle_; marries Miss Hogarth on April 2, 1836; appearance at that date; power of physical endurance; admirable influence of his peculiar education; and its drawbacks 27 CHAPTER III. Origin of "Pickwick"; Seymour's part therein; first number published on April 1, 1836; early numbers not a success; suddenly the book becomes the rage; English literature just then in want of its novelist; Dickens' kingship acknowledged; causes of the book's popularity; its admirable humour, and other excellent qualities; Sam Weller; Mr. Pickwick himself; book read by everybody 40 CHAPTER IV.