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
Dickens in America but also reading other writers' travel books that Dickens himself read before sailing. These include Frances Trollope's and de Tocqueville's books. She visits the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where the original manuscript is kept, and marvels over all the changes and corrections in Dickens's hand that cover every page. She notices that the closing paragraph of the manuscript as published originally had another sentence at the end but it has been crossed out in such a way that she can't read it. Miriam then meets with Dickens scholars and experts at the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street