Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of
Monica Dickens Sydney she had been approached by a woman who handed her a copy of her book and enquired, presumably in a broad Australian accent, ""How much is it?"". Dickens reportedly misheard this as an instruction as to the name which she should include in the inscription (""Emma Chisit"") and thus was born the phenomenon of "Strine" which filled the newspaper's letter columns and subsequently was the subject of a separate weekly article and, later, a series of humorous books. Monica Dickens Monica Enid Dickens, MBE (10 May 1915 – 25 December 1992) was an English writer, the great-granddaughter of Charles