social criticism, as the Marshalsea debtors' prison is displayed as a symbol of England's condition. This was followed by A Tale Of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1860-1861).

These later novels showed a Dickens who was more somber than before. This was partly a result of social disillusionment and partly of personal and domestic circumstances. Despite his literary successes, Dickens was not a happy man. His marriage was falling apart and in the spring of 1859 he and his wife separated. The immediate reason for the breakup was Dickens's growing attraction to the young actress Ellen Lawless Ternan.

Charles Dickens spent the last decade of his life in increased personal unhappiness and failing health. He gained no real happiness from his relationship with Ellen Ternan. Moreover, his sons, given all the advantages he lacked, were not turning out as well as he had hoped. One or two of them apparently had inherited their grandfather's attitude towards money and it seemed they were destined for useless lives much in the manner of the early Pip in Great Expectations.

From 1858 onward, Dickens spent much of his energy giving a series of public readings from his own works. They were extremely successful, and in 1867, despite poor health, he visited the United States where his performances were a great success as well. He left the United States in April 1868 in irreparably poor health. He continued to push himself, and was halfway through his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when he had a stroke and died, at Glad's Hill, on June 9, 1870. He was buried five days later in Westminster Abbey.