The story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857. She was eighteen, a hard-working actress performing in his production of the Frozen Deep; he was forty-five, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens' marriage, while obliterating Nelly Ternan from the public record. …