Why did Charles Dickens separate from Catherine Dickens in 1858?

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Portrait of Charles Dickens seated at a desk, writing with a quill pen, dressed in a suit with a bow tie. — Charles Dickens English novelist Charles Dickens working at his craft. Dickens published some of most beloved novels in English literature, including *A Christmas Carol*, *A Tale of Two Cities*, and *Great Expectations*.

Charles Dickens separated from his wife, Catherine, in May 1858 primarily due to his intense, growing attachment to the young actress Ellen Ternan.

While Dickens publicly and privately justified the separation by claiming that he and Catherine were fundamentally incompatible, that she suffered from mental instability, and that she was an unfit mother, these accounts lacked candor. He omitted his passion for Ternan, whom he had met while performing in the play The Frozen Deep in 1857.

The separation caused a significant scandal, as it contradicted the public image of Dickens as a man who held a deep reverence for "household sanctities." Although Catherine maintained a dignified silence, the dissolution of their marriage revealed a more complex and less conventional side of the novelist than his contemporaries had previously realized.1