Ellen turner and charles dickens biography video

By 1857, when Charles Dickens met the young actress Ellen Ternan, he had been one of England’s most famous men for the past two decades.

To his legions of fans, who gobbled up best-selling serialized novels like The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, Dickens seemed like the ultimate Victorian-era family man.

Born poor, he had lifted himself up through hard work and was living out his professed ideals of domesticity and moral rectitude with his wife, Catherine, and their large brood of children.

But the truth, as always, turned out to be more complicated.

Within a year, Dickens’ infatuation with the then-18-year-old Ternan — known as Nelly — would lead to the messy breakup of his marriage, and launch a relationship that would last the remainder of his life.

Dickens first met Ternan when he cast her in a play

Indulging his lifelong passion for th