" CHARLES DICKENS "

Charles John Huffam Dickens

FRSA (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870),
 pen-name "Boz", was an English novelist.
During his career Dickens achieved massive worldwide popularity,
 winning acclaim for his rich storytelling and memorable characters.
Considered one of the English language's greatest writers,
he was the foremost novelist of the Victorian era as well
 as a vigorous social campaigner. He was a reformist
writer (a writer who wrote about the bad things in order
to change society for the better).

Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton,
championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable
 characters and his powerful social sensibilities. Yet he has also
received criticism from writers such as George Henry Lewes,
 Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, who list sentimentality,
 implausible occurrence and grotesque characters as faults in his oeuvre.^[1]

The popularity of his novels and short stories during his lifetime
 and to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none
 have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels,
 which was the usual format for fiction at the time, and each
new part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public.