Augustus Dickens Augustus Dickens Augustus Newnham Dickens (10 November 1827 – 4 October 1866) was the youngest brother of English novelist Charles Dickens, and the inspiration for Charles's pen name 'Boz'. Augustus Dickens was the son of Elizabeth ("née" Barrow) and John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth. Charles Dickens's pen name, 'Boz', was actually taken from his youngest brother's family nickname 'Moses', given to him in honour of one of the brothers in "The Vicar of Wakefield" (one of the most widely read novels in the early 19th century), which when playfully pronounced through the nose became
Elizabeth Dickens their eight children, was born in 1812. As a young boy he was taught to read by his mother, and later also a little Latin, awakening, as Charles later told his friend and biographer John Forster "his first desire for knowledge and his earliest passion for reading". According to Mary Weller, the Dickenses' servant when they were living in Chatham, Elizabeth Dickens was "a dear, good mother and a fine woman". By 1812 her husband had fallen heavily into debt and Elizabeth, like Mrs Micawber in "David Copperfield", tried to help his financial situation by setting up a school called