21 June 2011 CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON by Andrea Warren, Houghton Mifflin, November 2011, 160p., ISBN: 978-0-547-39574-6

"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."

Charles Dickens.

For half a dozen years I worked for a book retailer named after one of his well-known books and characters (Copperfield's). 

This was followed by half a dozen years when I volunteered in a middle school where another of his works is read every year to the eighth graders (A Christmas Carol).

The most memorable speech of my adulthood was an extended allusion to one of his books (Mario Cuomo's 1984 "A Tale of Two Cities" speech). 

I even once named one of my Nubian goats after one of his books (Treadsoftly Great Expectations).

Yet, while I'd learned many bleak details of Dickensian London, I knew virtually nothing of the author himself.

Until now.

This coming February seventh will mark the two-hundredth anniversary of Charles Dickens's birth and CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON is an excellent introduction to the immortal and enduringly popular British author and social reformer who made a real difference in so many ways. 

"His interest in educating slum children was 'intense and prolonged,' according to one historian.  It began when Dickens visited a Ragged School operating in a rundown house in one of London's worst slums.  Afterward, he wrote 'I have very seldom seen...anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children.  The odor of the dirty children was so overpowering that the friend with him had to leave.  Dickens stayed, talking to the boys and girls and watching them at their lessons.

"In a lengthy letter to the editor of the Daily News he urged Londoners to visit Ragged Schools and see for themselves the good work taking place.  'The name implies the purpose,' he wrote.  'They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn to enter any other place, who could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from any church door, are invited to come in here, and find some people...willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out, which is not the iron hand of the Law.'"

In CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON, we learn how, having become enlightened at a young age through his own real-life childhood riches-to-rags story, Charles Dickens sought throughout the remainder of his life to change the world of poor children in London, both through his writing and with the money he earned for that writing.  We learn about others before him, including Handel the composer, Hogarth the painter, and Coram the sea captain, who similarly helped these London children who were so often left to die.

There are true stories of workhouses and debtor prisons interspersed with stories of foundling hospitals and Ragged Schools interspersed with stories of Dickens's utilizing his own experiences as inspiration for his stories.  And it is not just in London that he sought to improve conditions.  He took on cruel boarding schools in Yorkshire and the child labor and environmental abuses in industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester.  And he really made change happen.

Through everything I learn here about Dickens, I find an awful lot to like about this guy.  

"Dickens warning to the British to beware of man's offspring, Ignorance and Want, did not fall on deaf ears.  The wheels of change moved slowly, but by the turn of the century and the end of Victoria's reign in 1901, the reforms that began in Dickens' lifetime had eased the suffering of the poor.  While many powerful people were responsible for this, Dickens rightfully received credit, long after he had died, for goading the upper classes to do the right thing -- and making them want to do it."

And so it is that Charles Dickens inspired and continues to inspire readers.