Charles Dickens was born on the 7th February 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK.

He endured a grim childhood after the imprisonment of his father and the rest of his family in Marshalsea for bad debt.
Charles was sent to work in Warren’s boot blacking factory,just off the Strand in London. Here he endured terrible conditions.

Dickens went on to become a journalist and author, his writings reflecting the conditions and social injustice of the time.

The first installment of Oliver Twist was published in a magazine called Bentley’s Miscellany which Dickens was editing at the time.

It was a story about a wretchedness of life in Victorian London and is considered to be a thinly veiled protest about the Poor Law of 1834.