Charles Dickens Dies (1870)
On June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens — the most widely read English novelist of the nineteenth century, the creator of Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Sydney Carton — died at Gad's Hill Place, his home in Kent, following a stroke at the dinner table the previous evening. He was 58 years old. He had been working on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was never completed. His death prompted national mourning in Britain and across the English-speaking world.
A Life That Became His Work
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, the second of eight children of a navy clerk who was perpetually in financial difficulty. When Dickens was twelve, his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Charles was sent to work in a boot-blacking factory — a humiliation that marked him for life and that he never fully disclosed even to his closest friends. The experience gave him an intimate, visceral understanding of poverty and the indifference of the prosperous to the suffering of the poor that would animate every novel he wrote. After his father's release he attended school, taught himself shorthand, and became a journalist. His comic serial sketches about London life — collected as Sketches by Boz in 1836 — led to the commission of The Pickwick Papers, which became a national sensation. Dickens was 24 years old and already famous.
Did You Know?
Dickens had a lifelong obsession with theatrical performance and frequently staged elaborate amateur theatricals. He also gave public readings of his own work that were theatrical tours de force — and almost certainly contributed to his early death. His American reading tour of 1867–68 was a physical ordeal, with packed halls, tremendous excitement, and grueling travel. His doctor begged him to stop; he refused. He collapsed during the 1869 reading tour of England and was ordered to rest. He returned to work immediately.
The Greatest Advocate for the Poor
Over a career spanning 35 years, Dickens published fifteen major novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces, and edited two weekly periodicals — Household Words and All the Year Round — through which much of his serial fiction was published. His most celebrated works include Oliver Twist (1837–39), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak House (1852–53), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860–61). Dickens was not merely an entertainer; he was a crusader. His novels targeted workhouses, debtors' prisons, the court system, the Yorkshire boarding schools where unwanted children were warehoused and abused, industrial exploitation of child labor, and the general callousness of Victorian society toward those born without means. His 1843 story of Ebenezer Scrooge is credited, perhaps apocryphally but not entirely inaccurately, with helping to revive the celebration of Christmas as a family holiday centered on generosity and warmth.
The Final Years and Sudden Death
Dickens's personal life was complicated. He had ten children with his wife Catherine Hogarth, whom he separated from in 1858 after falling in love with a young actress, Ellen Ternan. The separation caused scandal and cost him some friendships. He became increasingly famous and increasingly exhausted by the demands of his celebrity, his writing schedule, and the taxing public readings he loved. On the evening of June 8, 1870, he was at dinner at Gad's Hill Place when he suddenly slumped in his chair. A doctor was summoned; Dickens never regained consciousness and died the following evening, June 9. He was found in violation of his own wishes: he had left instructions for a modest funeral, "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," and specifically asked not to be buried in Westminster Abbey. He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey anyway. The grave was left open for two days; thousands of ordinary Londoners came to pay their respects, many of them weeping and leaving flowers. The Mystery of Edwin Drood — half finished — was published posthumously and has inspired generations of mystery writers to propose solutions to its unsolved plot.