“It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.”

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.