His novels and short stories are widely read today.

His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. Charles John Huffam Dickens ( / ˈ d ɪ k ɪ n z/ 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.