“Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.”

English writer and journalist, Victorian era

Charles Dickens was an English writer and journalist of the Victorian era. He is best known for creating some of literature’s most familiar fictional characters, and he remains closely associated with the novel form he helped define. His books and short stories were hugely popular in his lifetime, and later critics and scholars came to regard him as a literary genius. His work is still widely read, with many readers drawn to the vivid characters and social detail that made his fiction endure.