Charles Dickens Jr.
eldest child of Victorian-era novelist Charles Dickens

Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (6 January 1837 – 20 July 1896), better known as Charles Dickens Jr., was the first child of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. A failed businessman, he became the editor of his father's magazine All the Year Round, and a writer of dictionaries. He is now most remembered for his two 1879 books, Dickens's Dictionary of London and Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames.
Life and career
Charles Dickens Jr. was born at Furnival's Inn in Holborn, London, the first child of Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine Hogarth. He was called "Charley" by family and friends. In 1847, aged ten, he entered the junior department of King's College, London. He went to Eton College, and visited Leipzig in 1853 to study German. In 1855, aged 18, he entered Barings Bank. In 1858, after his parents' separation, his father agreed he should live with his mother.
“Charles Dickens Jr.” enters the record as eldest child of Victorian-era novelist Charles Dickens. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Dickens and eldest can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4775087. VIAF identifies the subject as 37658306. The Library of Congress control number is nr97026911. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1837, 1896, 1879 and 1847.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Dickens Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.