Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity. BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE: Behold me on my way to an emigrant ship, on a hot morning early in june. my road lies through that part of london generally known to the initiated as down by the docks.