Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens, the English writer that due to his works political reforms were promoted for the benefit of the most impoverished people in the country and the trend of Christmas celebration especially for children and those good-hearted citizens who share the same compassion for the weakest part of society as our brilliant author. His works are of paramount importance in England and worldwide especially his novels about children such as "A Christmas Carol", "Oliver Twist", "Great Expectations" and "David Copperfield". Before Dickens, there was literature for children by means of tales (cuentos) or lesson paddles (paletas con lecciones) often moralistic, religious or funny (story tellers). There were pictures of the world (orbis pictus) with sentences for children to learn since in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but the Father of the children´s literature is John Newbery, an Englishman who published "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes" and "A Little Pretty Pocket Book" in the eighteenth century.

Charles Dickens is one of the most important writers in the world in the English language such as William Shakespeare, James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in February, 1812 and he was one of the most important writers during the reign of Queen Victoria in England. The family moved to Chatham, in Kent where he enjoyed playing in the castle of Rochester, they moved again in 1822 to Camden Town, and his father spent above the family´s possibility and he entered then prison because of debts and the family suffered poverty. He was forced to work at 12 years old at a factory beside River Thames, when his father was released(liberado) and received money from an inheritance (herencia), Charles came back to school though for a short period because he dropped (abandonar) school and worked since he was fifteen years old till his death in 1870. Here are the links about his biography. Charles Dickens was very fond of children, he wrote many novels about children as main characters and also fought so much against child labour in England, that they changed the law to end the work of children at England due to the success of his novels. He wrote a novel which is considered his autobiography "David Copperfield", he had ten children with his wife Catherine Hogarth. Here you can read more about his works related with children. He wrote about children as protagonists ( "Oliver Twist", "David Copperfield", "Little Dorrit", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Great Expectations", "Martin Chuzzlewit", "The Old Curiosity Shop", etc. ) and he criticised harshly (duramente) about the mistreatment of poor children and orphans. Charles Dickens did a great deal to improve the living conditions of poor children in England and the world afterwards (después) and also he contributed to the celebration of Christmas and the reading of literature about Christmas after his success (éxito) in " A Christmas Carol" because he later would write every Christmas season another novel about this celebration.