Book description
'Facts alone are wanted in life': the children at Mr Gradgrind's school
are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only
to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town so
entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects
of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are
particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the
unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a
friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her
warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her.
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Landport in Portsmouth.
His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office who often ended up in
financial trouble. When Dickens was twelve years' old he was sent to
work in a shoe polish factory because his father had been imprisoned for
debt. In 1833 he began to publish short stories and essays in newspapers
and magazines.
The Pickwick Papers
, his first commercial success, was published in 1836, the same year
that he married Catherine Hogarth. The serialisation of Oliver Twist
began in 1837 while The Pickwick Papers
was still running. Many other novels followed and Dickens became a
celebrity in America as well as Britain. He also set up and edited the
journals Household Words
(1850-9) and All the Year Round
(1859-70). Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870 leaving his last novel,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
