In January 1837, Charles Dickens and Catherine were still living in small lodgings at Furnival’s Inn when their first child and son, Charles Culliford Boz Dickens, was born. With the space being unsuitable to raise a family, they moved to a nearby house at Doughty Street in March. The new house would be a place of grief soon after when Charles’s young sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, to whom he was devotedly attached, died very suddenly. In the autumn Charles stayed at Broadstairs, his first visit to the Kent seaside town which he became very fond of, and where he stayed for a number of successive years. In current affairs, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom in June, following the death of her uncle, King William IV.

February.

Dickens turns 25.

Charles Dickens’s 25th birthday was on 7 February 1837.

February.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist.

The second novel by Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, begins publication as a monthly serial in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany. It will continue to appear in monthly instalments to April 1839.

February.

Chartism takes shape.

The London Working Men’s Association publishes a petition calling for six demands to political reform. The six points, after being refined in subsequent months, will form the basis of a ‘People’s Charter’ and see the rise of the movement named after it, known as Chartism.

March.

Doughty Street.

Charles Dickens moves his new family from the cramped lodgings at Furnival’s Inn into a large house in Doughty Street.

June.

Victoria’s accession.

Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent becomes Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland following the death of King William IV. She will reign until her death in 1901.

July.

Channel hop.

Charles Dickens and Catherine, along with friend Hablot Browne, take a week’s long holiday across the English Channel, from Calais to Ghent, Brussels, and Antwerp.

September.

Railway boom.

A railway line connecting London to Birmingham opens at the start of a railway boom.

October.

Pickwick concludes.

The final instalment of Charles Dickens’s first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, more commonly referred to now as The Pickwick Papers, is published. It had been published as a monthly serial since March 1836.