Charles Dickens working career was a little eclectic, and it started when he was quite young.
At the age of 12, his father was in debtors’ prison, and Charles was removed from school by his parents and sent away to work in a shoe polish factory called Warren’s Shoeblacking Factory and Warehouse.
His experiences there would later become the inspiration for many of the scenes of his stories about orphaned children. Later, after his parents’ finances were more steady and Charles had received a bit more schooling, he went to work as an office boy for a solicitor.
When his father was finally released from debtors’ prison, the older Dickens got a job at a newspaper where young Charles was able to see writers and reporters in action.
Not long after, he decided this was his calling and managed to land a job as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle. His beat was the House of Commons.
In 1836 his first work, Sketches by Boz, was published, and thus began his rise to fame as a popular author. Thereafter, he made his living as an author.
