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The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete cover

The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete

Chapter 2: OF
By John Forster
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A detailed contemporary biography traces the subject's upbringing in a modest family, boyhood hardships, early work experiences, schooling, and first theatrical and literary interests; follows his start as a reporter and contributor to periodicals, the creation and publication of early sketches and serialized fiction, the circumstances behind his first popular successes and collaborators, and the development of later novels; interweaves personal recollections, letters, and anecdotes to illuminate friendships, family relations, habits, and working methods, while combining chronological narrative with critical commentary and documentary material.

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Title: The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete

Author: John Forster

Release date: June 20, 2008 [eBook #25851]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS, VOL. I-III, COMPLETE ***

THE LIFE

OF

Signature: Charles Dickens

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES DICKENS

BY

JOHN FORSTER.

THREE VOLUMES IN TWO.

VOL. I.


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BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1875.

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES DICKENS

BY

JOHN FORSTER.



VOL. I.
1812-1842.

TO THE

DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS,

M Y   G O D - D A U G H T E R   M A R Y

AND

HER SISTER KATE,

This Book is Dedicated

BY THEIR FRIEND,

AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND AND EXECUTOR,

JOHN FORSTER

NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

Such has been the rapidity of the demand for successive impressions of this book, that I have found it impossible, until now, to correct at pages 31, 87, and 97 three errors of statement made in the former editions; and some few other mistakes, not in themselves important, at pages 96, 101, and 102. I take the opportunity of adding that the mention at p. 83 is not an allusion to the well-known "Penny" and "Saturday" Magazines, but to weekly periodicals of some years' earlier date resembling them in form. One of them, I have since found from a later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and instructive character. "I used," he says, "when I was at school, to take in the Terrific Register, making myself unspeakably miserable, and frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body, was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: "Will you permit me to say that the house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment."

Palace Gate House, Kensington,
23d December, 1871.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.


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