Charles Dickens's Real Name: Charles John Huffam Dickens

Quick answer: Charles Dickens's documented full name is Charles John Huffam Dickens. Encyclopaedia Britannica records that form and gives his birth date as February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. A Victorian Web biography by David Cody likewise gives February 7, 1812, and names his parents as John and Elizabeth Dickens (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Victorian Web).

Real name and early life

Britannica lists the full name and says he spent happy childhood years in Chatham from 1817 to 1822 before the family lived in London. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, well paid but often in financial trouble. In 1824, the Victorian Web records, John Dickens was imprisoned for debt; his wife and children joined him in the Marshalsea Prison, while 12-year-old Charles was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory. Britannica also places the family's lowest point in 1824, when the eldest son was withdrawn from school and set to manual work in a factory. He later worked as an office boy, learned shorthand, and became a parliamentary and newspaper reporter. In 1834 he began publishing under the pseudonym "Boz."

Career highlights

Sketches by Boz appeared in 1836, the same year he was hired to write text that became The Pickwick Papers, an enormous popular success, and married Catherine, daughter of journalist George Hogarth, in April 1836. A rapid sequence of novels followed, including Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend. A Christmas Carol appeared in 1843. He edited the weeklies Household Words and later All the Year Round, and from 1858 he gave paid public readings. In 1858 he separated from his wife. In 1860 the family took up residence at Gad's Hill, near Chatham, the house where Britannica places his death.

Death

The Victorian Web records that he collapsed in 1869 with symptoms of a mild stroke, began the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood, suffered another stroke on June 8, 1870, at Gad's Hill after a day's work on the novel, and died the next day. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on June 14. Britannica gives the death date as June 9, 1870, at Gad's Hill, near Chatham, Kent.

Name notes for searchers

Charles John Huffam Dickens is the documented full name; he was known professionally as Charles Dickens and, early in his career, as Boz. Searchers looking for the author of A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, or Great Expectations are usually aiming at the same person.