here is what I have I added some things....and I don't have any thing to cite it with because I dont know what books your library has, so you can just go through here and decide ...for everything I added, you can 1) find things I added that are kind of like what your sources say and use that source to cite it 2) delete things that I added and 3) you can just leave some of the info I added without citing it... You dont need to cite everything, or every sentence would have a citation next to it... normally there are like 2-4 citations per average paragraph... so if I have any good information that you want to keep, you may need to just not cite it....and tell her it was something you already knew (if she asks) Charles Dickens was one of the great literary geniuses of all time and one of the most popular. It has been estimated that one out of ten Britons who could read, read his works, and then read them aloud to many others. He was, as he was nicknamed, "The Inimitable" and it can be argued that in all of English literature, his creativity is rivaled only by Shakespeare's. John Huffman Dickens was the second of eight children born to Elizabeth Barrow and John Dickens. Charles was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, a city in southern England. In 1814, the family moved to Catham, a city in Kent, where Dickens spent what may have been the five happiest years of his life. (Young Adults 354) Dickens' happiest years were considered to be between the ages of five and nine. (Americana 75) He seemed to be an imaginative boy, always roaming the countryside in hope of adventure. John Dickens was considered an easygoing man, but was unable to handle his money. He always found himself in serious debt. (Britannica 331) Tragedy struck Charles' childhood was destroyed when his father was transferred to London due to financial difficulties in 1822. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. Because of his poor head for finances, he found himself imprisoned for debt in 1824. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. (Britannica 331) When the family finances were partly remedied, his father was released. At this point, Charles Dickens, already scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother's insistence that he continue to work at the factory. (Americana 75) His father, however, rescued him from that fate, and between 1824 and 1827 Dickens was a day pupil at the Wellington House Academy in London. At fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at the Holborn law firm of Ellis and Blackmore. (75) He taught himself shorthand and by 1828 he became a reporter for the lay courts of Doctors' Common. The dull routine of the legal profession never interested him, so he became a newspaper reporter for the Mirror of Parliament, The True Sun, and finally for the Morning Chronicle. By the age of twenty, Dickens was one of the best Parliamentary reporters in England. His brief stint at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life; he spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster. This gloomy secret became a source both of creative energy and of the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal which would emerge, most notably, in David Copperfield and in Great Expectations. Shortly after becoming a newspaper reporter, Dickens began writing small fictional sketches of London life based on his observations for magazines.(75) His newspaper work had given him an intimate knowledge of the streets and byways of London, and late in 1832 he began writing sketches and stories of London life. They began to appear in periodicals and newspapers in 1833, and in 1836 were gathered together as "Sketches by Boz, Illustrations of Every-day Life, and Every-day People." In Feb. 1836, Dickens' authorial career was launched with the publication of a two volume collection, "Sketches by Boz."(75) Dickens first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was well under way in 1836-1837. Dickens had been asked to provide the text for a series of comic sporting plates, but Dickens' characteristic determination took over and he remodeled the project into his own design.(75) The success of Pickwick convinced Dickens that his real career lay in writing fiction. He gave up his Parliamentary reporting in order to devote himself full time to it. In 1830, he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker. However, that relationship ended in 1833. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of one of the owners of the Morning Chronicle. Catherine bore Charles ten children in fifteen years, and his growing family made it necessary to work exhaustingly at his writings. His next work, Oliver Twist, began appearing even before Pickwick was completed. Nicholas Nickleby followed in a like manner in 1838-39, and the very first number sold some 50,000 copies. During this same period he was editor of Bentley's Miscellany (1837-39). By the 1840s, Dickens had become the most popular novelist in Britain, taking over the place long held by Sir Walter Scott. Dickens' relationship with Catherine became uncongenial and in 1858, the couple separated.(76) For the next few years, Dickens dedicated himself to writing. The first number of Master Humphrey's Clock appeared in 1840, and The Old Curiosity Shop, begun in Master Humphrey, continued through February 1841. At that point, Dickens commenced Barnaby Rudge, which continued through November of that year. In 1842 he embarked on a visit to Canada and the United States in which he advocated international copyright laws and the abolition of slavery. His American Notes, which created a furor in America appeared in October of that year. Martin Chuzzlewit, part of which was set in a not very flatteringly portrayed America, was begun in 1843, and ran through July 1844. A Christmas Carol, the first of Dickens' enormously successful Christmas books appeared in December 1844. In that same year, Dickens and his family toured Italy. The family remained abroad in Italy, Switzerland, and France until 1847. Dickens returned to London in December 1844, when The Chimes was published, and then went back to Italy, not to return to England until July of 1845. That year also brought the debut of Dickens' amateur theatrical company, which would occupy a great deal of his time from then on. The Cricket and the Hearth, a third Christmas book, was published in December. In 1847, in Switzerland, Dickens began Dombey and Son, which ran until April 1848. The Battle of Life appeared in December of that year. In 1848 Dickens also wrote an autobiographical fragment, directed, and acted in a number of amateur theatricals, and published what would be his last Christmas book, The Haunted Man, in December. David Copperfield was written between 1849 and 1850. In 1851, Dickens worked on Bleak House, which appeared monthly from 1852 until September 1853. In 1859 his London readings continued, and he began a new weekly, "All the Year Round." The first installment of A Tale of Two Cities appeared in the opening number, and the novel continued through November. In 1860, Dickens underwent a period of retrospection, burning many personal letters. He re-read his own David Copperfield, the most autobiographical of his novels, before beginning Great Expectations, which appeared weekly until August 1861. By 1865, Dickens was in poor health due largely to consistent overwork. That year, an incident occurred which disturbed Dickens greatly, both psychologically and physically. Dickens was badly shaken up in a railway accident in which a number of people were injured. By 1867, Dickens was very ill but carried on, compulsively, against his doctor's advice. Late in the year he embarked on an American reading tour, which continued into 1868. Dickens's health was worsening, but he took over still another physically and mentally exhausting task, editorial duties at "All the Year Round." During 1869, his readings continued, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, until at last he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. Further readings were cancelled, but he began upon The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens's final public readings took place in London in 1870. He suffered another stroke on June 8 after a full day's work on Edwin Drood, and died the next day. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on June 14. Dickens had a unique talent of combining humanism and humor. He is considered a national figure who is read and esteemed by people in all walks of life.(75) Many of his novels have been turned into dramatized, filmed, and adapted musicals. Some of his most familiar sayings have become apart of our everyday language.(75) Later generations labeled Dickens as a "Victorian Scarecrow with flaws," and saw him as a showman rolling in jokes and sickly sentimentality.(75) In more recent times, Dickens has been taken seriously as a literary artist and a social analyst.(75) Much of his literary criticism has stressed his symbolism, and at times strange qualities of his most famous works.(75) The world of Dickens' novels is a fantasy world, a fairy-tale world, a nightmare world. It is a world seen through the eyes of a child: the shadows are blacker, the fog denser, the houses higher, the midnight streets emptier and more terrifying than in reality. The characters, too, are seen as children see people. Their peculiarities are heightened to eccentricities, and their vices, to monstrous proportions. Most of the people in his novels are caricatures, characterized by their externals, almost totally predictable in behavior. We know little about them beyond their surface behavior because Dickens focuses on the outward man, not the inner motives. His characters are intensely alive and thus memorable. The characters from a Dickens novel are remembered long after the plots and even the titles of the books have been forgotten. Dickens' opinion of Victorian society as over-industrialized, money-oriented, and vanity, has given him a place in the great tradition of socially and morally responsible novelists.(75) In his lifetime, Dickens saw Great Britain change from a rural, agricultural land to an urbanized, commercial-industrial land of railroads, factories, slums, and a city proletariat. These changes are chronicled in his novels, and it is possible to read them as a social history of England. For example, Oliver Twist shows the first impact of the Industrial Revolution - the poverty existing at that time and the feeble attempt to remedy it by workhouses. Dickens grew increasingly bitter with each novel; his criticism of society became more radical, his satire less sweetened by humor. In his later novels he became almost angry. In his early novels, society itself is not evil; it is only some people who are bad and who create misery for others by their callousness and neglect. By the time of Dombey and Son was published, it was the institutions which became evil, representing in that novel the self-expanding power of accumulated money. Hard Times (1854) savagely displays the economic theories which Dickens considered responsible for much of human misery. Dickens seemed to be much of a socialist. However, Lenin, the father of Communist Russia, found Dickens intolerable in his "middle class sentimentality." George Orwell was probably correct when he stated that Dickens' criticism of society was neither political nor economic, but moral.