'[Charles Dickens] astonished his schoolfellows by being the only one able to spell theatre, a feat which suggests not only his own early attachment to that place of entertainment but also the woeful ignorance of his classmates. [...]'

[Dickens's] servants were at first horrified by Italian food and Italian manners; their usual method of communication with the natives was to speak English verybloudly and very slowly, as if they were deaf rather than Italian, [...].

[In A Christmas Carol Dickens] brands himself as a true radical, even revolutionary: in this Christmas book, so hard a present for those who defended the satus quo, it is queite clear that Dickens really did despise the political system of his country as much as he loathed its social mores.

Charles Dickens's own memories of this school are far from complimentary, and in a speech much later in life he declared that "the respected proprietor of which was by far the most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know, who was one of the worst-tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was to make as much out of us and to put as little into us as possible ..."

It was his [i.e. Dickens's] custom to walk nine or ten miles every morning, all the time thinking of the books he was about to write; [...].

[...] he was already announcing its [i.e. the journal's] aim as the '... raising up of those that are down, and the general improvement of our social conditions'.

[...] he went on to express his gratitude to the theatrical profession: 'Not because the actor sometimes comes from scenes of affliction and misfortune - even from death himself - to play his part before us; all men must do that violence to their feelings, in passing on to the fulfilment of their duties in the great strife and fight of life.'

Marx [...] told Engels that Dickens had 'issued to the world more political and and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together'.

[...] it was as if Dickens had no responsibility at all for the emergence of his children into the world.