Much of the life of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) appeared in fictional form in his literary work. His childhood began happily, but it dramatically changed in his eleventh year when the family moved from Chatham, a port town, to the city of London. Soon after the move, his father was sent to prison for unpaid debts. Young Charles was taken out of school and eventually put to work in a warehouse. The mark that these two experiences left on him was profound. Later in life he became an ardent social critic on behalf of the poor and downtrodden who filled London's streets in the mid-nineteenth century.

Eventually Charles returned to school, but he left again at the age of fifteen to work as a legal clerk and legal reporter. When he was twenty-one, he began contributing stories, many of them humorous, to various newspapers and magazines. His unique writing style and social awareness won him wide popularity. Having found a market and an audience, Dickens began to publish his longer works in serial form, or installments. His first novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in serial form from 1836 to 1837 and gained him substantial fame. Dickens soon became one of the most popular and renowned writers of his day, both in England and the United States. Despite his commercial success, the pain of his childhood haunted him, and many of his novels sympathetically describe the poverty and insecurity of children, clerks, and small merchants struggling on their own in the city.

A Christmas Carol (1843), featuring the character Ebenezer Scrooge, is perhaps Dickens's most well-known work. A Tale of Two Cities (1859), a historical novel set in France and England during the French Revolution, is extremely well regarded. Other major works include Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Bleak House (1853), and Hard Times (1854).