Entries from Come Sit a While that draw on the words of Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) became the most beloved novelist of the Victorian age, but he began in humiliation. When Charles was twelve, his father was thrown into the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, and the boy was pulled out of school and sent to paste labels on bottles in a damp, rat-ridden blacking warehouse for ten hours a day. He felt utterly abandoned — a wound he kept secret for most of his life. Out of that early misery came both his social conscience and his genius: he gave the world Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol, and he spent his fame fighting for the poor, the imprisoned, and the forgotten children of England. He knew misfortune from the inside. That is precisely what gives his counsel about blessings its weight — it is not the easy optimism of a man who never suffered.
Entries featuring Charles Dickens
- Go On in Hope (2026-02-23)
Drawn from 1 entries · refreshed July 24, 2026