Considered among the greatest novelists in the English language, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born to crushing poverty and was forced to work in a factory as a child when his father was jailed in debtor’s prison. In spite of his lack of education, he found a job as a journalist and from there wrote a series of novels that vastly entertained the reading public. His writing is distinguished by his social consciousness, his effective use of melodrama, and his caricatures of character types which, though broad, were unfailingly accurate.