John Dickens John Dickens John Dickens (21 August 1785 – 31 March 1851) was the father of English novelist Charles Dickens and was the model for Mr Micawber in his son's semi-autobiographical novel "David Copperfield". The son of William Dickens (1719–1785) and Elizabeth Ball (1745–1824), John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth in Hampshire. On 13 June 1809 at St Mary le Strand, London, he married Elizabeth Barrow, with whom he had eight children. He was later transferred to London and then to Chatham, returning to live in Camden Town in London in 1822 to work
Charles Dickens a "cavalier organisation". Virginia Woolf had a love-hate relationship with his works, finding his novels "mesmerizing" while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style. Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed his admiration for the author, "We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances. It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!". "A Christmas Carol" is most probably his best-known story, with frequent new adaptations. It is also the most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with