Editing Charles Dickens (section)

===Autobiographical elements===
[[File:David Copperfield, We are disturbed in our cookery.jpg|thumb|right|230px|An original illustration by [[Phiz]] from the novel ''David Copperfield'', which is widely regarded as Dickens's most autobiographical work]]
Authors frequently draw their portraits of characters from people they have known in real life. ''David Copperfield'' is regarded by many as a veiled autobiography of Dickens. The scenes of interminable court cases and legal arguments in ''Bleak House'' reflect Dickens's experiences as a law clerk and court reporter, and in particular his direct experience of the law's procedural delay during 1844 when he sued publishers in Chancery for breach of copyright.<ref>{{harvnb|Polloczek|1999|p=133}}.</ref> Dickens's father was sent to prison for debt, and this became a common theme in many of his books, with the detailed depiction of life in the [[Marshalsea]] prison in ''Little Dorrit'' resulting from Dickens's own experiences of the institution.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=}}.</ref> Lucy Stroughill, a childhood sweetheart, may have affected several of Dickens's portraits of girls such as Little Em'ly in ''David Copperfield'' and Lucie Manette in ''A Tale of Two Cities''.<ref>{{harvnb|Slater|1983|pp=43, 47}}</ref>{{refn|Slater also detects Ellen Ternan in the portrayal of Lucie Manette.|group="nb"}}

Dickens may have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of them and would not reveal that this was where he gathered his realistic accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life until six years after his death, when John Forster published a biography on which Dickens had collaborated. Though Skimpole brutally sends up [[Leigh Hunt]], some critics have detected in his portrait features of Dickens's own character, which he sought to exorcise by self-parody.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|p=653}}.</ref>