On this day in 1870 the English writer Charles Dickens died.

The man who wrote the best-selling novel of all time, (A Tale of Two Cities), was wildly popular in his lifetime, partly because his works were first serialised in popular magazines and journals which made them not only monthly cliff-hangers but also cheap and accessible to the masses.

Famously, when The Old Curiosity Shop was being serialised, American fans waited at the New York docks, shouting out to the incoming ship, “Is little Nell dead?” Dickens never forgot his own miserable childhood when he was forced to work in a factory while his father languished in a debtor’s prison.

Here is a poem from another work weary Victorian – Christina Georgina Rossetti, Weary In Well-Doing:

I would have gone; God bade me stay:
I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
He read my yearnings unexpressed
And said them nay.
Now I would stay; God bids me go:
Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,
My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
And vex it so.
I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;
Day after day I plod and moil:
But, Christ my God, when will it be
That I may let alone my toil
And rest with Thee?

To listen to this poem, click here –

Today I will try to do my best in everything that I set out to do because I believe that it is part of my purpose in life and anything less would be bad for my self-esteem.