Charles Dickens - Six of the Best

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.

Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best.

In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words.

These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.

Charles Dickens was born on the 7th February 1812, in Portsmouth, England, the second of eight children. The family endured many financial struggles and, when he was just 12, his father was sent to Marshalsea debtors' prison, the result of which was Dickens finished his education and went to work in a rat-infested boot-blacking factory to help pay off the debt. These experiences of neglect and hardship were to later provide themes in his books such as ‘Little Dorrit’ and ‘David Copperfield’.

He did manage to resume his education and to work for a short time as a legal clerk before embarking on a career as a reporter for newspapers, such as The Morning Chronicle and magazines such as The Monthly Magazine, covering parliamentary debates and elections.

His first book, ‘Sketches by Boz’, a collection of his magazine pieces, was published in 1836 as was the serialization of his first novel, ‘The Pickwick Papers’. Suddenly he was an international celebrity. By publishing in a serialized format his stories were weekly, affordable events for the working and middle classes, each with a cliffhanger ending to keep readers captivated. This was a radical departure from normal publishing and also allowed him to adjust plot and characters each week before publishing the complete work as a book.

As well as writing bestsellers he was an ardent and vocal proponent of social reform, highlighting the disparate gap between the rich and the downtrodden, the appalling prison system, and the brutal workhouse system, as well as the dreadful conditions suffered by working children.

He used his fame and resources to launch a number of magazines where he worked and promoted the works of many others including such luminaries as Wilkie Collins. Christmas, as we know it today, was moved from one of religious observance to one based more on goodwill, charity and generosity towards others. This is most easily exemplified by his most famous story, A Christmas Carol.

Over his career Dickens wrote 15 novels, 5 novellas, several plays and hundreds of short stories, travel pieces and other articles.

He also embarked on several hugely financially successful speaking tours across Britain and America where he drew huge audiences eager to listen to the literary phenomenon that was Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens died of a stroke on the 9th June 1870. He was 58. Despite requesting a simple burial such was his stature that he was interred in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

© 2025 Six of the Best (E-bog): 9781806373499

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E-bog: 4. november 2025