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Hello, and welcome to Homeschool History.
I'm Greg Jenner, and I've spent my whole career making history fun on the TV show Horrible Histories, and more recently on the BBC podcast You're Dead to Me, although that one's mostly for the grown-ups.
With everyone being cooped up in the house, I thought I'd deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family. Who says that homeschooling can't be a bit of fun?
Today we are taking a literary leap to Victorian England to learn all about one of the most famous writers who's ever lived: Charles Dickens, the author of awesome classics like Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. And listen up, because at the end of the episode there'll be a quick quiz to see how much you can remember.
Little Charles was born in Portsmouth in 1812. His family were lower class, but they had dreams of being a bit posher, especially Charles' dad, who cheekily borrowed a posh family's crest and used it for himself. That was quite embarrassing, it's a bit like spray-painting the family car gold and claiming it's a Lamborghini.
Charlie was the second oldest of eight kids, and he certainly wasn't the favourite child. His parents sent his sister off to the Royal Academy of Music, hoping that she would be the family's great success story. Poor Charles grew up in her shadow.
From a young age, Charles was a big-time book nerd. He'd sit alone, reading and re-reading for hours rather than running around and playing with the other kids. His childhood was a lot like lockdown, except without the Joe Wicks workouts.
(Joe Wicks: Please get up, everyone! You can do it literally in your pants, if you want!)
Charles Dickens did not do exercise.
Sadly, Charles' dad, who worked for the Navy, spent too much money on making the family seem posh, (Good day to you!) and so he ended up being thrown into debtor's jail. Weirdly, most of the Dickens family joined him there, until he could pay off his debts at least. But that was pretty hard, because he had no job, because, well, he was in jail. Weird system.
Anyway, little Charles didn't go to jail. No, aged just 12, he had to go and live with a different family, and he was sent to work in a London factory, sticking labels on bottles of boot polish. It wasn't a very nice job, and also all of his wages went to supporting his family, although he once did treat himself to a very nice dinner. But then he felt really guilty about it. Poor Charles.
200 years ago, lots of children worked instead of going to school. In fact, in his novel Oliver Twist, Dickens created a character called Fagin, who is named after one of the factory boys he knew. And this was something Dickens did a lot. He loved to base his characters on real people he knew, but he didn't have nice memories of his time in the factory.
He later wrote the words: "No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship."
He felt that all of his hopes of becoming a fancy fella were being crushed. But he must have seemed a bit fancy to his new friends because they nicknamed him the Young Gentleman.
Thankfully, Charles escaped factory life after several months, and he went back to school. At 15, he became a legal clerk. It was a big promotion from small boy who sticks things on stuff, but it was a dull job, and he hated how unfair the legal system was to people who had no money or power. These feelings later inspired one of his novels, Bleak House.
And it's probably no coincidence that Dickens, the legal clerk, earned the same wages as the beloved clerk Bob Cratchit from his story A Christmas Carol. (You might know it from the movie starring Kermit the Frog.)
Even though he didn't like exercise as a kid, when he was older, Charles Dickens really liked to walk around London and get to know all the different districts and different accents that people had. He would have made an excellent taxi driver.
But in 1830, he decided to fall in love instead. Her name was Maria Biednell, and she, well, she did not feel the same about Charles. In fact, she was a bit mean to him.
Her father was a banker, and Charlie thought that he probably wasn't good enough for her. He tried to improve his lot by going for an audition to become an actor, but unfortunately, he missed the audition because he got a nasty cold. Things got worse when Maria made fun of him on his 21st birthday party. It's a bit mean, isn't it? They broke up shortly afterwards.
After the big breakup, Charles learned some new skills. He became a renowned parliamentary reporter, writing down the speeches that politicians said in Westminster.
He also anonymously dropped off his first piece of creative fiction writing at a publishing house, and, excitingly, they printed it. (Hooray!) Charles was so proud, he had a little cry.
(Oh, Charlie, that's okay. Have a tissue.)
In 1836, two brilliant things happened to Charles. One, he married Catherine Hogarth. She was a well-educated and pretty daughter of a respectable editor, and the fact that Charles was accepted by Catherine's posh family was a big deal for the former factory boy.
One of my fave stories about Charles Dickens when he was dating Catherine was that he played a prank on her and her family. He jumped in through the window, dressed as a sailor, and performed a hornpipe dance without any warning.
And they stood there, confused, and then he jumped out of the window again, didn't say a word, and then a few minutes later, he came in through the front door, wearing normal clothes, and didn't mention it. Fair play, Charlie. Top banter.
But as well as marrying Catherine, his even bigger, even more brilliant thing in 1836 was his writing breakthrough. He wrote a series of funny stories called the Pickwick Papers.
They were about a group of lads being lads and having jolly adventures. People loved his sense of humour, and it became a really big success, particularly when he introduced a Cockney servant character called Sam Weller, who Charles named after his childhood nurse, Mary Weller.
This was the thing about knowing Charles Dickens, you never knew whether your name might end up in one of his books. Surprise! Speaking of names, at that time, Charles' work was published under his made-up pen name of Boz, B-O-Z, and his illustrator used the name Fizz, P-H-I-Z.
Boz and Fizz, they sound more like DJs, don't they?
Over the next few years, Charles wrote hit after hit. He was like the Ariana Grande of Victorian literature. He had Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and the old Curiosity Shop. He wasn't making very much money, though, so not totally like Ariana Grande, and also, he didn't have the ponytail. But by the 1840s, Charles was very, very famous, and he went off to tour America. The Americans loved him, but Charles was pretty disappointed in the country, which was nothing like the perfect land of the free which he'd imagined growing up. He was especially disgusted by American slavery, which happened in the South, and this didn't go down very well with some Americans. They thought he was rude for criticizing them.
This was when Charles Dickens was hitting his stride. He now had more control over his works, and he finally started to make some proper, proper money. His books and magazine articles became well known for campaigning against bad stuff, like child poverty, dangerous factories, cruel workhouses, and prisons. He believed people in society had to be kinder and more compassionate to each other, which is also the theme behind A Christmas Carol, the story of the mean-spirited, money-grabbing Mr. Scrooge, who's visited by ghosts who help him see the true meaning of Christmas, which of course is snowball fights. Sorry, I mean being nice to people.
Of course, when you buy books, the author has finished writing them, but most of Dickens' stories were published in small sections over many months, sometimes for up to two years at a time, and he didn't often plan his plots in advance, so sometimes the books really changed style when he changed his mind about what he wanted to do. For his absolutely hooked readers, it was sort of like waiting for the next episode of Doctor Who. People were thrilled to see what might happen next, and Americans queued at the docks for British ships to arrive so they could ask the passengers what had happened to Dickens' characters. Even in Victorian times, people still wanted to look up spoilers before reading the book for themselves.
So Charles Dickens was an international superstar, but in 1858, Charles' life was rocked by a personal scandal when he publicly separated from his wife, Catherine. He'd started dating a much younger actress in secret. Her name was Ellen Ternan, and he even sent Ellen a piece of jewelry, which was mistakenly delivered to his wife. Yikes, that's like sending an embarrassing text message to the wrong person. If that wasn't bad enough, Charles handled the whole thing terribly. He was publicly very mean about Catherine, and he wrote a provocative letter in the Times newspaper. He said she was a bad wife and a bad mum, and some historians think he even tried to get his wife sent off to go and live in an asylum, which is very nasty. Anyway, he forced her out of the house, and he stopped her from seeing her nine children. What a rotter.
The public were very upset with Charles Dickens. His fans saw him as a good family man who wrote about being a good person. But Charles Dickens was going through a nasty divorce, and this was not at all good for his image. It was as if Greta Thunberg had been caught chucking fizzy drink bottles at a dolphin's head or punching a polar bear.
In 1865, another terrible event shook up Charles' personal life when he was caught up in a really horrible train crash. Fellow passengers hailed him as a hero as he helped some of the injured people, but he also raced back into the broken carriage to rescue a draft of his latest book. Charles, priorities, please! The crash, understandably, was very upsetting for him, especially since he was probably sneaking back from France with his secret girlfriend, Ellen. She was injured in the crash, but he couldn't let anyone know because then the scandal would have got out. For the rest of his life, Charles Dickens was terrified of traveling on trains. You can see why. He still kept on writing, though. He founded a couple of magazines, and as he got older, he started to plan his books in advance. This is when he wrote one of his greatest books, arguably his best book, Great Expectations. He also did another American tour. This time, he was doing readings from his book. These readings were very, very popular. People queued overnight on mattresses in the cold to see him, and he raked in huge sums of money. But he found these reading tours very exhausting. He was a passionate and energetic performer, and sometimes he had to have a big lie down after the performance.
In the end, it all got too much, and he died aged 58 years old, halfway through writing his 15th book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, leaving behind the ultimate cliffhanger. Considering he'd spent his whole career making people wait to read what happened next, it was a very Charles Dickens way to die, to leave the book unfinished.
With all of its twists and turns, you might think that the life of Charles Dickens was worthy of a Charles Dickens novel, and in a way, it was. His beloved novel David Copperfield was originally meant to be Dickens' own life story, a type of book known as an autobiography. There's a clue in the hero's name. David Copperfield's initials, DC, are Charles Dickens' initials backwards, CD. But Dickens was too ashamed to tell people that he'd once been a doctor. He was a poor factory boy, and that his dad had gone to prison. So, he got embarrassed and made the book about a fictional character, David Copperfield. So that brings us to the end of Charles Dickens' life. Now it's time for the quickfire quiz to see how much you've learned.
Answer to question 1. He was sticking labels on jars of boot polish.
Answer to question 2. was, of course, Boz.
Answer to question 3. was Catherine Hogarth.
Answer to question 4. was 58 years old.
Answer to question 5. was David Copperfield.
Hopefully, you've enjoyed getting to know Charles Dickens. Why not get to know him some more by reading one of his books? I personally love A Christmas Carol. It's funny, a bit scary, and actually quite easy to read. It's one of my favourite books, so give it a whirl.
Tune in next time for some more homeschool history with me, Greg Janner. And make sure to subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode.
Thank you for listening. Take care and goodbye.
Hello, I'm Simon Armitage and I'm here to tell you about my new Radio 4 podcast, The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed. Tucked away high in the Pennine Hills, the shed is where I sit and write. But writing can be a lonely and, dare I say, boring business. So I've lined up a few visitors to drop by. Kate Tempest and Maxine Peake both try their hand at a bit of Middle English. Guy Garvey shares birdwatching anecdotes. Lily Cole takes me to the Amazon rainforest. And I teach beatboxing world champion Testament how to make a kookaburra sound. But to be honest, once the door of the shed is shut, the conversation goes wherever it likes. Just search for The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed on BBC Sounds.
