Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth-century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity. Description above from the Wikipedia Charles Dickens licensed under CC-BY-SA, full