10-31-2025, 07:50 PM
Charles Dickens wrote about compassion, justice, and broken hearts, but he broke one of the biggest himself.
When Catherine Hogarth married the young journalist in 1836, Dickens was charming, poor, and full of dreams.
Within a year The Pickwick Papers made him famous, and Catherine began a life that would soon disappear behind his success.
Over 15 years, she gave birth to 10 children. Ten pregnancies in an age without modern medicine. Ten times risking her life. Dickens’s fame exploded, but Catherine’s health crumbled. She battled exhaustion and depression, what we now know as postpartum depression.
By the 1850s, Dickens was a celebrity. He gave readings to crowds of thousands, met queens, and redefined English literature. But at home, he was restless and cruel. He called Catherine “incapable,” “slow,” and even “mentally deficient.” He moved her into a separate bedroom.
Then came Ellen Ternan, a young actress only 18 when Dickens was 45. He became obsessed. Unable to divorce Catherine because Victorian law protected his image, he forced her out of the house instead.
He kept nine of their children and gave Catherine only one. Her own sister Georgina Hogarth took Dickens’s side and stayed in his home to help raise the children, a betrayal that cut Catherine deeply.
To defend his reputation, Dickens published a letter in The Times claiming Catherine was unstable and unfit as a mother. The public believed him. England’s moral voice had spoken, and Catherine was silenced.
For the rest of her life, she lived quietly with her eldest son. Forgotten, humiliated, and erased from the story of the great Charles Dickens.
Before she died, Catherine gave her daughter a bundle of love letters from their early years, proof that once, before fame and ego, Dickens had truly loved her.
She said softly:
Those letters are there today.
A small act of defiance from the woman the world was told to forget.
When Catherine Hogarth married the young journalist in 1836, Dickens was charming, poor, and full of dreams.
Within a year The Pickwick Papers made him famous, and Catherine began a life that would soon disappear behind his success.
Over 15 years, she gave birth to 10 children. Ten pregnancies in an age without modern medicine. Ten times risking her life. Dickens’s fame exploded, but Catherine’s health crumbled. She battled exhaustion and depression, what we now know as postpartum depression.
By the 1850s, Dickens was a celebrity. He gave readings to crowds of thousands, met queens, and redefined English literature. But at home, he was restless and cruel. He called Catherine “incapable,” “slow,” and even “mentally deficient.” He moved her into a separate bedroom.
Then came Ellen Ternan, a young actress only 18 when Dickens was 45. He became obsessed. Unable to divorce Catherine because Victorian law protected his image, he forced her out of the house instead.
He kept nine of their children and gave Catherine only one. Her own sister Georgina Hogarth took Dickens’s side and stayed in his home to help raise the children, a betrayal that cut Catherine deeply.
To defend his reputation, Dickens published a letter in The Times claiming Catherine was unstable and unfit as a mother. The public believed him. England’s moral voice had spoken, and Catherine was silenced.
For the rest of her life, she lived quietly with her eldest son. Forgotten, humiliated, and erased from the story of the great Charles Dickens.
Before she died, Catherine gave her daughter a bundle of love letters from their early years, proof that once, before fame and ego, Dickens had truly loved her.
She said softly:
Quote:“Give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once.”
Those letters are there today.
A small act of defiance from the woman the world was told to forget.