Who Was Charles Dickens?

Chapter 3
Introducing Boz

Charles worked as a law clerk until 1829. When he was seventeen, he became a newspaper reporter in the law courts. Sometimes he wrote funny stories that pointed out the unfairness of the laws at that time. For Charles, the courts were another place to observe how people behaved and to hear interesting stories.

At this same time, Charles met a young woman named Maria Beadnell. She was the daughter of a banker. Charles fell madly in love with her. Some nights after leaving the court at two in the morning, he walked miles to stand in front of her house. He wrote letters to her parents. He said what a good match he was for their daughter, even though he didn’t have much money.

Maria’s family was not impressed. Her mother never even bothered to get Charles’s name right. She referred to him as “Mr. Dickin.” In 1832, Maria’s parents sent her away to Paris.

With Maria gone, Charles focused on his writing. By the end of 1833, Charles had written a funny story about two cousins having dinner. He dropped the story, called “Dinner at Poplar Walk” into a “dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street.” This was the office of the Monthly Magazine. A few days later, Charles bought a copy of the magazine and found the story printed there!

Charles’s name didn’t appear with the story. He didn’t even get paid for it, but Monthly Magazine wanted more stories from the young writer. Instead of signing himself “Charles Dickens” in the magazine, he used the name “Boz.” He borrowed the name from his youngest brother, Augustus, who was nicknamed Moses. As a toddler, Augustus pronounced it as “Boses,” which became “Boz” for short.

Charles wanted to write a longer story about a group of friends who form a club. The Pickwick Papers, his first novel, wasn’t published as a book at first. Instead, it appeared one chapter a month, starting in March 1836. People loved Charles’s characters, especially the servant Sam Weller. Charles wrote Weller’s words with a Cockney accent, the very way he had heard people speak on the streets of London: “Werry sorry to ’casion any personal inconvenience, ma’am, as the house-breaker said to the old lady when he put her on the fire . . .”

Everyone was talking about The Pickwick Papers and Boz. No one knew that Charles Dickens was the real author of the novel. But that would soon change.

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, MANY BOOKS WERE WRITTEN ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME. A SINGLE CHAPTER WOULD BE PUBLISHED IN A MAGAZINE EACH MONTH. A MAGAZINE WAS USUALLY THIRTY-TWO PAGES AND CAME WRAPPED IN GREEN PAPER. PEOPLE WOULD BUY EACH ISSUE OF THE MAGAZINE TO READ THE NEXT PART OF THE STORY. THIS WAS GOOD FOR PUBLISHERS, BECAUSE IT MADE PEOPLE EAGER TO BUY MAGAZINES. FOR PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T HAVE MUCH MONEY, A FEW PENNIES A MONTH WAS AN AFFORDABLE WAY TO READ A NOVEL.

ONCE THE WHOLE STORY WAS COMPLETE, THE PUBLISHER WOULD SELL A BOUND BOOK. THOSE WHO COULD AFFORD IT BOUGHT THE STORY AS A BOOK.

CHARLES DICKENS HAD CONTRACTS WITH MORE THAN ONE PUBLISHER. EACH CONTRACT WAS AN AGREEMENT THAT CHARLES WOULD WRITE A BOOK IN INSTALLMENTS FOR THAT PUBLISHER. HIS FIRST NOVEL, THE PICKWICK PAPERS, WAS PUBLISHED BY CHAPMAN AND HALL. OLIVER TWIST, WHICH HE WROTE AT THE SAME TIME, WAS PUBLISHED IN THE MAGAZINE BENTLEY’S MISCELLANY AND PUBLISHED BY RICHARD BENTLEY.

Now that Charles was becoming successful, he felt it was time to get married. There wasn’t anyone he loved the way he had Maria Beadnell, but in the winter of 1836 he had met Catherine Hogarth through her father, a newspaper editor. If Charles wasn’t exactly in love with Catherine, he did like her an awful lot, and he was very good friends with her younger sister, Mary.

On April 2, 1836, Catherine and Charles were married. A month later they were expecting their first child.