Charles Dickens’s happy childhood was shattered when he father was jailed for debt leaving his family penniless. The life story of the writer is easily told in this admirably concise account which delves into Dickens’s own life showing how what happened to him enabled him to write classics such as Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. Subtitled, ‘The man who invented Christmas’ in particular it tells the true story that inspired Dickens’s celebrated A Christmas Carol.
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.
