Charles John Huffam Dickens.

Charles Dickens was an English writer, generally considered to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at Landport in Portsea, the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily on duty in the district. Very soon after the birth of Charles, the family moved to Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and then when he was four to Chatham, in Kent, where he spent his formative years until he was 11.

In 1833 Dickens's first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk was published in the London periodical, Monthly Magazine.

Dickens loved the style of the 18th century picturesque or Gothic romance novels, although it had already become a target for parody.

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered an stroke at his home, after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day, on 9 June, five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash (9 June 1865), he died at Gad's Hill Place.