On this day, 213 years ago, Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England. He would eventually become one of the greatest writers in the English language. But before that, he had a difficult childhood. He grew up under a spendthrift father who was perpetually in debt- at a time when that condition held great shame and often the threat of imprisonment. Young Charles was sent to work in a factory at a very young age in order to support his family while his father was in a debtor's prison. This had a profound effect on him. Not only did it influence his writing, but Dickens also carried a lifelong desire to aid the poor and oppressed, even founding a shelter home for homeless women. That's not to say, of course, that he was universally kind and benevolent. He was a distant father to his many children, an unfaithful husband to his devoted wife, and a cantankerous client of his many publishers. Yet, he managed to be a prolific and popular author of many novels that have a permanent place in the English literary pantheon. And each year, his classic A Christmas Carol is read, performed, and shown as a movie (in countless iterations) to a degree hardly seen with any other piece of writing. Thought his life ran a short 58 years, his lasting influence on the culture cannot be overstated. So on this day, let us remember a true titan of the written word, Charles Dickens.
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