Charles Dickens, the foremost British writer, is memorable for his interesting characters and rich plots. He was a social activist who wrote plays and novels during the Victorian period. His best known novels include Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and others. . Master Humphrey's Clock was a weekly periodical edited and written entirely by Charles Dickens from April 4, 1840-December 4, 1841. It began with a frame story in which Master Humphrey tells about himself and his small circle of friends. Master Humphrey was a lonely man who lived in London. He kept old manuscripts in an antique grandfather's clock by the chimney-corner. He decided that he would start a club, called Master Humphrey's Clock, where the members would read aloud their manuscripts to the others.
One of the grand masters of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.
