The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Dickens, Charles John Huffham
Dickens, Charles
John
Huffham
(
1812
–
70
), born in Portsmouth, the son of a clerk in the navy pay office. He spent the happiest period of his boyhood in Chatham; this was followed by a period of intense misery which deeply affected him, during which his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea and he himself (aged 12) worked in a blacking warehouse. Memories of this painful period inspired much of his fiction, notably the early chapters of
David Copperfield
. He then worked as an office boy; studied shorthand; and became reporter of debates in the Commons for the
Morning Chronicle
. He contributed to the Monthly Magazine (
1833
–
5
), to the Evening Chronicle (
1835
), and to other periodicals the articles subsequently republished as
Sketches by ‘Boz’
, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People (
1836
–
7
); these attracted much attention and...
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