Charles Dicken - Timeline

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, which is a city in England.

In January 1815 John Dickens was called back to London, and the family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia.[13] When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".

This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House, and the family (except from Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term of work) moved to Camden Town in London.

In 1822, the Dickens family moved to Camden Town, a poor neighborhood in London. By then the family’s financial situation had grown dire, as John Dickens had a dangerous habit of living beyond the family’s means. Eventually, John was sent to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was just 12 years old.

In 1833, he began submitting sketches to various magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym “Boz.”

In 1836, his clippings were published in his first book, Sketches by Boz. Dickens’s first success caught the eye of Catherine Hogarth, whom he soon married.

Catherine would grace Charles with a brood of 10 children before the couple separated in 1858.

In 1842, Dickens and his wife, Kate, embarked on a five-month lecture tour of the United States. Upon their return, Dickens penned American Notes for General Circulation, a sarcastic travelogue criticizing American culture and materialism.

In 1865, Dickens was in a train accident and never fully recovered. Despite his fragile condition, he continued to tour until shortly before his death.

After suffering a stroke, Dickens died at age 58 on June 9, 1870.