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Charles Dickens had many associations with the town of Dover and the passages appear in his books, articles and letters.

When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveler upon.

The little narrow crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs like a marine ostrich.The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs and brought the coast down madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavor that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea.

A little fishing was done in the port and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made and was near flood. Small tradesmen who did no business whatever sometimes unaccountably realized large fortunes and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighborhood could endure a lamplighter.

Charles Dickens 1859