Q 01/05

In which city was Charles Dickens born?

A) Portsmouth

B) Plymouth

C) Rochester

D) Southampton

Answer · why

A) Portsmouth

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

Q 02/05

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

A) Mrs Nickleby

B) Mrs Jellyby

C) Mrs Wilfer

D) Mrs Pardiggle

Answer · why

A) Mrs Nickleby

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.

Q 03/05

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

A) Edmund Kean, the actor

B) Joseph Grimaldi, the clown

C) Charles Mathews, the comedian

D) Madame Vestris, the singer

Answer · why

B) Joseph Grimaldi, the clown

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

Q 04/05

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

A) Newgate

B) The Fleet

C) The King's Bench

D) The Marshalsea

Answer · why

D) The Marshalsea

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

Q 05/05

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

A) John Forster

B) Wilkie Collins

C) William Macready

D) Daniel Maclise

Answer · why

A) John Forster

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