Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, which is located in the United Kingdom. His family was poor. His parents were John Dickens and Elizabeth Barrow. When he was 9 years old, he started going to school, but stopped studying because his father was imprisoned for some debts and they hadn´t enough money. When he was eleven years old, he started working in a shoes factory called Warren's boot-blacking factory, which caused him bad experiences, which marked his life due to the poor conditions in which the poorest people lived and worked. At age 12 he returned to school to study. Around 15 he was a secretary and started studying journalism, becoming a journalist and much later a writer of his uncle's newspaper. At age 21 he wrote an article using the name 'Boz' instead of his real name in the magazine "The Monthly Magazine". This article caught the attention of an editor of the city, who commissioned him a series of texts that had to follow the same style as the article that he had previously published. This new work, "Los Apuntes de Voz", was very successful. He continued writing works that other artists would illustrate for him and finally his fame as a novelist increased very fast. At age 55 he undertook a tour of the United States. He was well received and applauded at conferences where he talked about his life and read his works, which enthused the audience. Charles was received by Queen Victoria shortly before his death on June 9, 1870.
