A Tale of Two Cities [antikvár]

The author and his workCharles John Huflham Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at Portsea, the eldest son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and was in many respects the prototype of the thriftless but perennially optimistic Mr Micawber in David Copperjield, the earlier chapters of which are based on Dickens's childhood. In 1814 he was transferred to London and in 1816 to Chatham, where the elder Dickens once told his son that, if he persevered, he might one day come to live in Gad's Hill Place, a prophecy that was fulfilled. In 1823 the family moved to Camden Town, London. Shortly afterwards, because of his financial difficulties, Mr Dickens was sent to the Marshalsea (debtors') Prison. During this time the boy was employed in a blacking factory, where his sensitive nature suffered more from the humiliation than any actual ill-treatment.When his father was retired on a pension, Dickens was given two years of regular education, and then entered the office of a Gray's Inn solicitor, where in eighteen months he acquired a knowledge of the law that he used with great effect in his writings. He worked hard at shorthand and in 1835 joined the staff of the Morning Chronicle, on which his father had already found a post. He was a parliamentary and descriptive reporter for seventeen years, travelling round the country frequently by coach, remarkable for his keenness of observation and imaginative powers. Dickens was a conscientious reporter: his work came first.I have been in my time belated on many by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheel-less carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have