John Dickens was an amiable but improvident naval pay clerk. Dickens, however, favored civil rights for Catholics and even once hoped his daughter would marry the Catholic Percy Fitzgerald, one of his literary protégés.īorn in Portsea (now Portsmouth), Charles was the second child of John and Elizabeth Barrow Dickens. Equally unsympathetic with High Church Anglicanism, he feared that the Oxford Movement might lead the English back to Roman Catholicism. Early experience with Dissenters gave him a lifelong aversion to evangelical zeal, doctrinal disputation and sectarianism. He associated with Unitarians until the end of his life. An enormously successful author and performer of his own work, he was the conscience of Victorian England.Īlthough Dickens was baptized and reared in the Church of England and was a nominal Anglican for most of his life, he turned to Unitarianism in the 1840s as a Broad Church alternative. He is known as well for exposing the wretchedness of the downtrodden, for his anger at their heartless oppression and for his contribution to the celebration of Christmas. His enduring comic characters are part of the culture. General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (UK)Ĭharles Dickens (February 7, 1812-June 9, 1870) is often considered the finest English novelist of the 19th century. Unitarian Universalist History & Heritage Society Charles Dickens Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography
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