One of England's greatest novelists, Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, on February 7, 1812, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. In 1814, the family moved to London and then to Chatham, in Kent. John Dickens, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office, was imprisoned for debt in 1824, and Charles was sent to work in a shoe-blacking warehouse for five months.
After attending Wellington House Academy in London from 1824 to 1827, Dickens became a solicitor's clerk and studied shorthand. Within a few years he had become a freelance newspaper reporter, and he published his first short story in 1833. Sketches by Boz, his sketches of London life, was published in 1836, the same year he became editor of a new monthly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, a post he held for three years......
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