Charles Dickens

Dickens' novel "Our Mutual Friend" was featured in the Season Two finale of the TV series Lost. The book was the last novel he finished.

His eighth child was Henry Fielding Dickens, born in 1849. He was named after the famous novelist Henry Fielding, who was one of Dickens' favorite authors. Henry Fielding Dickens went on to become a well-respected lawyer who was knighted in 1922. Henry's great-grandson is Gerald Charles Dickens, a contemporary actor who performs a one-man version of A Christmas Carol.

His last child was born in 1852, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens. Dickens named his seventh son after his friend, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who served as the child's godfather. Bulwer-Lytton was a politician and novelist, though not nearly as respected as Dickens is today. The first line of his novel Paul Clifford contains the oft-mocked line "It was a dark and stormy night."