Charles Dickens

Born in Portsmouth in 1812, Dickens was pulled from school at twelve when his father landed in debtors' prison; he spent three years in a boot-blacking factory before returning to finish his education. He started as a journalist, then edited a weekly journal for two decades while writing fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of stories and articles. The 1836 serial launch of The Pickwick Papers - supercharged by the character Sam Weller in episode four - made him an international celebrity almost overnight. He pioneered serialised narrative fiction, the dominant Victorian publishing mode, holding readers in suspense with cliffhanger endings and tweaking his plots mid-run when audiences reacted; the illiterate poor paid a halfpenny per episode to hear them read aloud. His 1843 A Christmas Carol became a permanent fixture of the culture; Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities followed, the latter his best-known historical fiction. He spent his final years on gruelling public reading tours and died in 1870, the most famous writer of his era.