Dickens, Charles was born on Feb. 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. He was a famous British novelist（小说家）, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period（维多利亚时代）. The defining moment of Dickens's life occurred when he was 12 years old. With his father in debtors' prison（因欠债入狱）, he was withdrawn from school（被迫辍学） and forced to work in a factory. This deeply affected the sensitive（敏感的） boy. Though he returned to school at 13, his formal education ended at 15. As a young man, he worked as a reporter. His fiction（小说） career began with short pieces reprinted in 1836. He exhibited a great ability to spin（编写） a story in an entertaining（愉快的） manner. His comic novel The Pickwick Papers in 1837, made him the most popular English author of his time. The serialization（长篇连载） of such works as Oliver Twist (1838) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) followed. After a trip to America, he wrote A Christmas Carol (1843) in a few weeks. With Dombey and Son (1848), his novels began to express a heightened uneasiness（高度的不安） about the evils（罪恶） of Victorian industrial society, which intensified in the semiautobiographical（半自传性的） David Copperfield (1850), as well as in Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), Great Expectations (1861), and others. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) appeared in the period when he achieved great popularity for his public readings. Dickens's works are characterized by an encyclopaedic（百科全书似的） knowledge of London, pathos, a vein of the macabre.