Lost, lonely, orphaned, or badly-treated children very often appear in Dicken's novels. The sympathy and compassionate imagination with which Dickens wrote about such children may have come partly from memories of his own unhappiness when he was young.
After three months John Dickens was released from prison and some time later he took his son from the factory and sent him to Wellington House Academy, a school run by a harsh headmaster. Here, between the ages of twelve and fifteen, he was already trying his hand at the kind of writing that would launch him on his professional career. He submitted what was called "penny-a-line stuff" to his father's employer, the British Press: information about fires, accidents, or police reports missed by the regular reporters.
The time in the lawyers's office .
Dickens left school at the age of fifteen and became a clerk in a lawyers' office. Deciding to become a parliamentary reporter, he taught himself shorthand at night, while continuing to work in the office. In 1828, during his sixteenth year, he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor's Commons Courts. For several years he alternated reporting, exploring the London streets, and reading avidly in London's libraries. Already devoted to the essays of Joseph Addison, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Jon, he now read the major nineteenth-century essayists: Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Thomas DeQuincey. At this time he also developed a great love for the theatre which was later reflected in his novels. .
At the age of eighteen Dickens fell passionately in love with Maria Beadnell, a pretty and careless girl. She was the daughter of a bank manager who did not like Dickens's poverty. She herself also seems to have treated him rather coldly. The affair lasted for several years and ended in 1833. It was a most unhappy one for Dickens.
In 1832 Dickens became a very successful shorthand reporter of Parliamentary debates in the House of Commons.
