EARLY LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS IN KENT

Dickens was driven to achieve success from the days of his boyhood. With little formal education, he taught himself, worked furiously at everything he undertook and rocketed to fame as a writer in his mid-twenties. He continued to work assiduously to the end of his life. Besides making a prodigious contribution to English Literature as a writer of fiction, he edited a weekly journal for twenty years and became an accomplished performer of his own works.

   1812-1817  Infancy in Portsmouth and London  Born on 7th February 1812 at a house in Mile End Terrace, Portsmouth, Hampshire. His father, John Dickens, worked as a clerk in the pay office of the Royal Dockyard. Family moved to London in 1814 when John was posted there

      1817     He had a happy boyhood in Kent
                   Father posted first to SHEERNESS then to Chatham Royal Dockyard, Kent.

                   Pleasant, formative boyhood years for Charles. His experiences in Chatham 

       1822   and neighbouring Rochester inspired much of his adult work.

Later in life he settled at Gads Hill between Gravesend and Rochester where he did most of his writing