Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the titular orphan, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of his parentage, and reconnects with his remaining family.
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893).
Albert Richard Smith was an English author, entertainer, and mountaineer.
Edmund Hodgson Yates was a British journalist, novelist and dramatist.
The Charles Dickens Museum is an author's house museum at 48 Doughty Street in King's Cross, in the London Borough of Camden. It occupies a typical Georgian terraced house which was Charles Dickens's home from 25 March 1837 to December 1839.
Bleeding Heart Yard is a cobbled courtyard off Greville Street in the Holborn area of the London Borough of Camden. The courtyard is probably named after a 16th-century inn sign dating back to the Reformation that was displayed on a pub called the Bleeding Heart in nearby Charles Street. The inn sign showed the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords.
Jacob's Island was a notorious slum in Bermondsey, London, in the 19th century. It was located on the south bank of the River Thames, approximately delineated by the modern streets of Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall West, George Row and Wolseley Street. Jacob's Island developed a reputation as one of the worst slums in London, and was popularised by the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, published shortly before the area was cleared in the 1860s.
St Stephen's Club was a private member's club in Westminster, London, founded in 1870.
The King's Bench Prison was a prison in Southwark, south London, England, from medieval times until it closed in 1880. It took its name from the King's Bench court of law in which cases of defamation, bankruptcy and other misdemeanours were heard; as such, the prison was often used as a debtor's prison until the practice was abolished in the 1860s. In 1842, it was renamed the Queen's Bench Prison, and became the Southwark Convict Prison in 1872.
Nathaniel Bentley, commonly known as Dirty Dick, was an 18th and 19th-century merchant who owned a hardware shop and warehouse in London. He was possibly an inspiration for Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, after he refused to wash following the death of his fiancée on their wedding day.
The Dickens Fellowship was founded in 1902, and is an international association of people from all walks of life who share an interest in the life and works of Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens.
Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens was a Royal Navy officer, the fifth son and seventh child of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine.
Mary "Mamie" Dickens was the eldest daughter of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She wrote a book of reminiscences about her father, and in conjunction with her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, she edited the first collection of his letters.
Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is a historical romance and a Newgate novel based on the real life of the 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard.
Tavistock House was the London home of the noted British author Charles Dickens and his family from 1851 to 1860. At Tavistock House Dickens wrote Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities. He also put on amateur theatricals there which are described in John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. Later, it was the home of William and Georgina Weldon, whose lodger was the French composer Charles Gounod, who composed part of his opera Polyeucte at the house.
Richard Bentley was a 19th-century English publisher born into a publishing family. He started a firm with his brother in 1819. Ten years later, he went into partnership with the publisher Henry Colburn. Although the business was often successful, publishing the famous "Standard Novels" series, they ended their partnership in acrimony three years later. Bentley continued alone profitably in the 1830s and early 1840s, establishing the well-known periodical Bentley's Miscellany. However, the periodical went into decline after its editor, Charles Dickens, left. Bentley's business started to falter after 1843 and he sold many of his copyrights. Only 15 years later did it begin to recover.
Angus Bethune Reach was a 19th-century British writer, noted for both his journalism and fiction. He was an acquaintance of such contemporary novelists as William Makepeace Thackeray and Edmund Yates, and counted the journalist and novelist Shirley Brooks as his greatest friend.
William Henry Wills JP was a British journalist, playwright, a newspaper editor and a close friend and confidant of the author Charles Dickens, who entrusted Wills with the task of forwarding his letters to his mistress Ellen Ternan.
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