Charles Dickens did not come from a privileged background, but nor were his parents without prospects. John Dickens (1785-1851), was the son of servants to the Crewe family - Cheshire gentry with a townhouse in Mayfair - whose patronage secured him a good position as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. This was a notch up the social ladder and brought him into the circle of Elizabeth Barrow (1789-1863), whose father and brother were likewise civil servants. The couple married in Tondon in 1809 at the church of St Mary-le-Strand and then returned to John’s posting at Portsmouth. The following year, however, Elizabeth’s father was discovered to have been systematically embezzling public funds and quietly fled the country. He pleaded that he had found himself incapable of supporting a large family. John Dickens, unfortunately, would prove equally bad with money.
Elizabeth had her first child, Fanny, in 1810 anddispatched to Sheerness and Chatham in Kent, before returning to the capital in 1822. Charles would later write of his childhood years in Chatham that “all my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place” and would list some of those favourite stories in his autobiographical novel (1849), including the fantastical . Kentish localities also loom large in his fiction, including in (1836), (1861) and (1870). But, of course, the place that would truly light up his imagination was London - the city which he would later dub his “magic lantern”.
