59 Fun Facts About Charles Dickens

In which city was Charles Dickens born?

Portsmouth. His will asked for no monument, yet in 2014 his birthplace unveiled Britain's first full-size statue of him.

Which rambling comic mother did Dickens base on his own mother?

Mrs Nickleby. His mother never saw the likeness: Dickens wrote that she once asked him whether he really believed such a woman had ever existed.

Which performer, whose memoirs he later edited, did Dickens watch as a young child?

Joseph Grimaldi, the clown. Dickens wrote only the preface himself, reworking a draft that another writer had made from the clown's own notes.

To which debtors' prison was John Dickens sent in 1824?

The Marshalsea. John Dickens was held in the Southwark debtors' prison over a debt, and his son later set Little Dorrit in the prison.

Whose biography, published after Dickens died, first revealed his childhood job pasting labels?

John Forster. Dickens kept the episode secret but gave Forster a handwritten account, which Forster printed in his Life of Charles Dickens.

Which Oliver Twist character took his name from a boy Dickens befriended at the blacking factory?

Fagin. After Jewish readers complained about the character, Dickens changed the novel's text in later editions.

Dickens never forgot his mother doing what?

Wanting to send him back to the blacking factory: she arranged his return after a quarrel ended the job, but his father refused and sent him to school instead.

Which school inspired the brutal Mr Creakle's establishment in Dickens's most autobiographical novel?

Wellington House Academy. In his essay Our School, Dickens told of going back to find a railway had swallowed its playground and sliced away the schoolroom.

Whose system of shorthand did Dickens teach himself in order to become a reporter?

Thomas Gurney's. Mastering it carried Dickens from the Doctors' Commons courts into the Commons press gallery and on to the Morning Chronicle.

Dickens's first love, Maria Beadnell, is thought to be the model for which character?

Dora Spenlow. Meeting a much-changed Maria again years later, Dickens recast her as the tiresome Flora Finching in Little Dorrit.

Why did Dickens miss his 1832 acting audition at Covent Garden?

He had a cold. Dickens wrote that he would apply again next season, but reporting and writing soon took over and he never did.

How did the pen name 'Boz' come about?

A nickname for his youngest brother. Dickens called little Augustus Moses, after The Vicar of Wakefield; said through the nose, it became Boses, then Boz.

Which character's arrival turned The Pickwick Papers into a publishing sensation?

Sam Weller. Sales soared after the cockney servant appeared, and Pickwick cigars soon turned up in the shops.

What happened to Robert Seymour, the original illustrator of The Pickwick Papers?

He took his own life. After a brief stand-in, Hablot Browne, known as Phiz, took over and went on to illustrate most of Dickens's later novels.

Which 1834 measure did Dickens attack in Oliver Twist?

The New Poor Law. Dickens took aim at its meagre workhouse diet, the reason hungry Oliver dares to ask for more.

Which gift from the actor Charles Fechter did Dickens use as his writing study?

A Swiss chalet. Dickens wrote in its upstairs room, and he spent his last working day there on Edwin Drood before collapsing that evening.

Dickens forbade publishing which work for his children?

Gospel stories. The family held them back until his last surviving child died in 1933, and they were published the next year.

Whose death in Dickens's arms in 1837 so shocked him that he missed a Pickwick deadline?

His sister-in-law Mary. Dickens slipped a ring from her finger and wore it for the rest of his life.

Dickens's pet raven Grip was the model for a bird in which novel?

Barnaby Rudge. When the real Grip died in 1841, Dickens soon found a new raven and named it Grip as well.

Which country did Dickens visit at the end of his 1842 American tour, acting on stage there?

Canada. In Montreal he directed and acted in three amateur plays, and back in London he went on to stage charity theatricals with friends.

Which American author headed the writers who signed Dickens's copyright petition to Congress?

Washington Irving. Raising copyright cost Dickens: some American newspapers branded their celebrated guest a mercenary scoundrel.

Dickens's travelogue of his first US trip was called what?

American Notes. Its closing attack on slavery, quoting newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves marked by their masters, offended many American readers.

In October 1843, Dickens gave a speech on educating the poor in which city?

Manchester. Soon after, while writing his next book, Dickens walked fifteen or twenty miles a night through London's black streets, weeping and laughing over it.

Which 1843-44 novel introduced the nurse Sarah Gamp?

Martin Chuzzlewit. Mrs Gamp's ever-present umbrella gave British English 'gamp' as slang for an umbrella.

Urania Cottage, a Shepherd's Bush home Dickens helped set up, took in whom?

Women rescued from the streets. Dickens did not just lend his name: he gave much of his own time to running the home.

Which firm published The Pickwick Papers in monthly shilling numbers?

Chapman & Hall. When sales of a later serial fell, the firm hinted it might cut his monthly pay, and Dickens moved to Bradbury & Evans.

Which novel did Dickens call his 'favourite child' among his books?

David Copperfield. Dickens was startled when a friend pointed out that his hero's initials were his own reversed.

Which Bleak House character dies of spontaneous combustion?

Krook. When the critic George Henry Lewes declared such a death scientifically impossible, Dickens publicly insisted that it could happen.

Which Kent house that Dickens had admired as a boy did he buy in 1856?

Gads Hill Place. His father had told him that if he persevered and worked hard, he might one day come to live in it.

Dickens's weekly journals Household Words and All the Year Round both took their titles from what?

Shakespeare. When Dickens launched the second journal, he again hunted for a Shakespeare line to print above its title.

Dickens fell in love with actress Ellen Ternan while staging which play with Wilkie Collins?

The Frozen Deep. Moved to a huge hall where amateur voices would not carry, the play needed professionals in his daughters' parts, and Ellen was one.

After the separation, which member of the household raised Dickens's children?

Catherine's sister Georgina. When Catherine moved out taking only their eldest son, her own sister stayed on with Dickens to run the house.

In 1858 Dickens spoke and read to raise funds for which struggling London hospital?

Great Ormond Street. He was already weighing paid readings when the appeal came, and a fortnight after reading for the hospital he gave his first reading for his own profit.

Alongside the Pickwick trial, Dickens's final reading featured which story?

A Christmas Carol. Though gravely ill, he closed by telling the audience he would vanish from those garish lights for evermore.

To which politician did Dickens dedicate A Tale of Two Cities?

Lord John Russell. Dickens, who had little faith in the political class, later said there was no man in England he respected more in public life.

What did Dickens burn in a bonfire behind his house in September 1860?

Letters people had sent him. Tired of seeing private letters misused in public, he went on destroying every non-business letter he received.

The stage illusion Pepper's ghost made its name in a scene from which Dickens story?

The Haunted Man. The trick bears Pepper's name, but it grew from a model by the engineer Henry Dircks, who soon accused Pepper of hogging the credit.

With America closed by the civil war, which country did Dickens consider touring for a large fee?

Australia. Tempted enough to plan a travel book about the trip, he still gave the idea up.

What did Dickens climb back into his dangling carriage to rescue after the Staplehurst crash?

His unfinished manuscript. In a postscript to Our Mutual Friend, he joked that he had climbed back to rescue its characters, much soiled but otherwise unhurt.

What appalled Dickens most when he watched a married couple hanged in public in 1849?

The behaviour of the crowd. His letter to The Times helped start a campaign that ended in 1868, when Parliament moved executions inside prison walls.

Which Dickens ghost story opens with the shout "Below there!"?

The Signal-Man. In the end the signalman is struck by a train whose driver had shouted those very words at him.

By the end of his 1867-68 American tour, Dickens was living largely on what?

Champagne and eggs in sherry. Unable to eat more than half a pound of solid food a day, he still kept up his readings until April 1868.

Why did doctors stop Dickens's farewell tour in April 1869?

Signs of a stroke. Doctors banned any readings that meant travelling, yet later let him give twelve last ones in London.

Dickens's unfinished last novel centres on John Jasper, a choirmaster addicted to what?

Opium. Dickens modelled the novel's opium den on a real one he visited in London's East End, run by a haggard old woman smoking from a pipe made of an ink bottle.

What were Dickens's reported last words?

'On the ground'. He is said to have spoken them when urged to lie down after collapsing at dinner, and he died the next evening without regaining consciousness.

How was Dickens buried in Westminster Abbey?

In a small private service. Once the news spread, the grave was left open for days as thousands came to pay their respects.

What did Queen Victoria give Dickens, with an inscription in her own hand?

Her Highlands journal. In March 1870, a few months before he died, the Queen received him in person.

Dickens named a son after which 18th-century novelist?

Henry Fielding. Dickens had first planned to name the baby after Oliver Goldsmith, then changed his mind and chose Fielding.

Which Dickens heroine did the Scottish critic Lord Jeffrey hail as the best thing since Cordelia?

Little Nell. Later critics were far less kind, and many came to find her saintly suffering ludicrously sentimental.

In his essay Night Walks, what sent Dickens walking London all night?

Insomnia. In the essay he says he beat it not by staying in bed but by going out as soon as he lay down and coming home tired at sunrise.

Which word from a Dickens character means hypocritically affecting high moral principles?

Pecksniffian. Seth Pecksniff, the architect, passed off his pupil's grammar-school design as his own.

In which Kent town did Dickens spend much of his early boyhood?

Chatham. His years there seem to have been happy, and the surrounding area gave the background for several of his novels.

Which magazine did Dickens edit from its first issue in 1837 until he fell out with its publisher?

Bentley's Miscellany. Editing it while writing a monthly serial for it left Dickens overworked, and quarrels over the novels he had promised Bentley ended in his resignation.

Which of Dickens's London homes became the Charles Dickens Museum?

48 Doughty Street. Dickens lived there less than three years before moving his growing family to a larger house near Regent's Park.

Which real-life essayist was the model for Harold Skimpole in Bleak House?

Leigh Hunt. After Hunt died, Dickens had to defend himself in print over the unflattering portrait of his old friend.

Which foreign author turned a planned short stay at Dickens's home in 1857 into five weeks?

Hans Christian Andersen. He overstayed his welcome so badly that the friendship cooled, and Dickens gradually stopped answering his letters.

Which banking heiress, whose charity work Dickens helped steer, funded a refuge he ran for years?

Angela Burdett Coutts. Dickens proposed the refuge to her himself, and while she paid for it, he took charge of its day-to-day running.

In which London home, his from 1851, did Dickens write Hard Times and Little Dorrit?

Tavistock House. Dickens staged amateur plays in a theatre he set up there, acting in them alongside his children and friends.

Which novelist introduced Dickens to his first book publisher?

William Harrison Ainsworth. That publisher later planned to reissue Dickens's early sketches, and Dickens had to buy the copyright back for far more than he sold it for.