Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life, sends this letter to the Birthday Boy. In it she describe to "Mr. Dickens" the 21st century as still the "best of times and worst of times." Always for the underdog, Dickens wrote the first classic novel I read and loved in high school, Great Expectations. Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham, like the man who created them, are unforgettable. But while some of Dickens' darlings and the author himself escaped poverty, the children Charles championed in his fight against social injustice still exist in multitudes. Proving there's still much work to do, The National Center for Children of Poverty at Columbia University profiles the poor in the US here.
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