Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English novelist and social critic, the most widely read author of the Victorian era. He published most of his fiction in monthly or weekly instalments, a format that shaped his cliffhanger structure and let him respond to his readers as a story unfolded. His novels, among them Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations, drew on his own childhood poverty to press for reform of the workhouse, the debtors' prison and the courts.