Are There No Prisons? Are There No Workhouses? The Knowledge of Charles Dickens

​Charles Dickens knew poverty and child labor. He knew these things.

Raised in a middle-class home, he was educated, not merely schooled, because his early schooling was mediocre, like most of the limited formal education available in the early 19th century. He owed much to the learning that comes by osmosis in a literate household. Above all, he read voraciously.

And then, disaster.

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