Charles Dickens was born in 1812, in Portsea, England, as the second child of John Dickens, a middle-class naval clerk. At 11, Dickens had his formal education interrupted; his father was too debt-ridden to afford it. At 12, Dickens went to work in a shoe-blacking warehouse. Soon after, John Dickens’s debt landed him in Marshalsea prison. Though his father was in prison for only three months, and Dickens returned to school shortly after, the experience proved formative: Dickens, isolated and ashamed during this time, resolved to make a success of himself. In quick order, he went from office boy, to parliamentary reporter, to a writer of short stories or “sketches” under his long-lasting pseudonym “Boz.” Sketches by Boz, published when Dickens was just 24, heralded the arrival of a new talent. This was followed by the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37), which made “Boz” and his characters famous. The novel established the combination of comedy and social critique that would emerge in Dickens’s next stories, up to and including A Christmas Carol.
The “Hungry ’40s.” A Christmas Carol occurs during the “Hungry Forties,” a time of economic depression, high unemployment, failed crops, starvation, and disease.
