Provoked by the horrors he saw every day, Charles Dickens wrote novels
that were originally intended as instruments for social change -- to
save his country's children.
Charles Dickens is best known for his contributions to the world of
literature, but during his young life, Dickens witnessed terrible things
that stayed with him: families starving in doorways, babies being
"dropped" on streets by mothers too poor to care for them, and a
stunning lack of compassion from the upper class. After his family went
into debt and he found himself working at a shoe-polish factory, Dickens
soon realized that the members of the lower class were no different than
he, and, even worse, they were given no chance to better themselves. It
was then that he decided to use his greatest talent, his writing
ability, to tell the stories of those who had no voice.
In this book, award-winning author Andrea Warren takes readers on a
journey into the workhouses, slums, factories, and schools of Victorian
England, and into the world of a beloved writer who used his pen to do
battle on behalf of the poor, becoming one of the greatest reformers of
his or any age.