Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870), pen-name "Boz, " was an English novelist of the Victorian era. An indication of the marital dissatisfaction between Dickens and his wife Catherine came in 1855 when he went to meet his first love, Maria Beadnell.  Maria was by this time married as well but she seems to have fallen short of Dickens' romantic memory of her.

 Dickens separated from his wife, Catherine in 1858.  In Victorian times divorce was unthinkable particularly for someone as famous as Charles Dickens, and he continued to maintain his wife in a house for the next twenty years until she died.

 Although they were initially happy together, Catherine did not seem to share quite the same boundless energy for life as her husband. Her job of looking after their ten children and the pressure of living with and keeping house for a world famous novelist certainly did not help.

When Catherine's sister, Georgina, moved into the house to help her there were rumors that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law.

He was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world."