Charles (John Huffam) *censored*ens born at Portsea near Portsmouth on 7th February 1812.

Dickens had some schooling, but his real education was the streets of London. All the best scenes in his later novels deal with London Characters.

Dickens appealed to social consciousness to overcome social misery. His immense popularity gave importance to his attacks on the abuses of the law - courts and schools who object was not the education of the children but the enrichment of the proprietors

was sweeping the country.. It was the Industrial Revolution.

England witnessed riots. Workers felt their jobs were threatened by the widening introduction of machinery. Groups of unemployed men set about destroying machines and in their way created havoc and chaos.

The movement was called the Luddite movement..

In Victorian times, there was an alarming contrast between rich and poor. whilst the owners of the industries were prosperous - the workers were poorly fed and poorly housed. Their working conditions, whether in factories or mines, were appalling. even women and children could be expected to work up to fifteen hours a day, for six days a week.

He was a man of the people, writing for the people. His father was a shiftless admiralty clerk and in his youth, *censored*ens experienced the direct effects of poverty, including a resident in a debtor's prison.

'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done, it is a far better rest that I go to than I have ever known"

The classic portrayal of Coketown which we find in 'The Key note chapter is rein forced later in ' Stephen Blackpool' where Dickens presents us with a vivid picture: Nature was as strongly bricked out as the killing airs and gasses were bricked in. at the heart of the Labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets...and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death.

People lived in back to back houses, lacking ventilation and indoor sanitation.coketown 'had a black canal in it, and a river ran purple with ill smelling dye,

In wishing to become 'a gentleman', Pip brings into close focus the social attitudes of his (and Dickens) world. His movement through this world exposes the social climate of the time.

man who many people look upon as the greatest English novelist once worked as a poor boy pasting labels on the tins of blacking. Charles never forgot this miserable and lonely time. But the experiences made him determined to succeed in life.

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Approximate Word count = 1561
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)