Elizabeth Dickens Elizabeth Dickens Elizabeth Culliford Dickens (née Barrow; 21 December 1789 – 13 September 1863) was the wife of John Dickens and the mother of English novelist Charles Dickens. She was the source for Mrs. Nickleby in her son's novel "Nicholas Nickleby" and for Mrs Micawber in "David Copperfield". One of eight children of Mary Culliford (1771–1851) and Charles Barrow (1759–1826), Elizabeth Barrow was introduced to John Dickens by her brother, Thomas Culliford Barrow, when the two men were working at the Navy Pay Office in nearby Somerset House. When John Dickens first met Elizabeth she was "a small pretty girl
Dickens in America these would be the meetings he had with American literary figures of the day. He met Longfellow in Cambridge, Washington Irving in New York and Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia. Part Six - Washington DC and Richmond Dickens traveled south by steamboat to Washington. Miriam travels along the Potomac in a pleasure boat. The two things that Dickens detested the most about America were slavery and tobacco spitting, which he saw more and more of, as he traveled further south. Dickens praised his first view of Washington and the capitol. (The capitol today is a much expanded building with a