Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
A few years after Hard Times was published, Dickens left Catherine, his wife of more than 20 years, and ten (ten!) children for a much younger actress, Ellen Ternan. (source)
When Dickens was 12 years old, his father was arrested and put into the Marshalsea debtor's prison. Dickens was forced to leave school and work at a shoe-blacking factory in order to repay his father's debts. (source)