As a child, Charles Dickens (1812-70) came to know not only hunger and privation, but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A surprise legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling. He taught himself shorthand and worked as a parliamentary reporter until his writing career took off with the publication of Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837). As a novelist and magazine editor, Dickens had a long run of serialized success through Our Mutual Friend (1864-65). In later years, ill health slowed him down, but he continued his popular dramatic readings from his fiction to an adoring public, which included Queen Victoria. At his death, The Mystery of Edwin Drood remained unfinished.

Gish Jen was born in New York, New York, and graduated from Harvard University. She is the author of the novels Typical American (1991), Mona in the Promised Land (1996), and The Love Wife (2004), as well as the short story collection Who’s Irish? (1999). Her shorter work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The New York Times, and in The Best American Short Stories of the Century.