Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! We encourage you to read The Guardian article “Charles Dickens and the Women Who Made Him” written by Dickens’ great-great-great-granddaughter Lucinda Dickens Hawksley. Here is an excerpt:

“The real women in Dickens’s life were very different from his domesticated and compliant creations, including three remarkable women in his family. Charles’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, was a servant in the household of Lord Crewe. She began as a housemaid and, after being widowed and left a single mother, worked her way up to the role of housekeeper. Her grandson retained vivid memories of her warm personality and storytelling.”