Catherine Dickens

Catherine Thomson "Kate" Dickens (née Hogarth; 19 May 1815 – 22 November 1879) was the wife of English novelist Charles Dickens, the mother of his ten children, and a writer of domestic management. Early life Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1815, Catherine moved to England with her family in 1824. She was the eldest daughter of ten children to George Hogarth. Her father was a journalist for the Edinburgh Courant, and later became a writer and music critic for the Morning Chronicle, where Dickens was a young journalist, and later the editor of the Evening Chronicle. Dickens immediately took a liking to the attractive 19-year-old Catherine and invited her to his 23rd birthday party. Catherine and Dickens later became engaged in 1835 and were married on 2 April 1836 in St Luke's Church, Chelsea, going on their honeymoon in Chalk, near Chatham in Kent. They set up a home in Bloomsbury, and went on to have ten children over the next 15 years, and at least two miscarriages. During that period, Charles wrote that even if he were to become rich and famous, he would never be as happy as he was in that small flat with Catherine. Catherine's sister, Mary Hogarth, entered Dickens's Doughty Street household to offer support to her newly married sister and brother-in-law. It was usual for an unwed sister of a wife to live with and help a newly married couple. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. She became a character in many of his books, and her death is fictionalised as the death of Little Nell.