Possible Clues:

• Have known better days to chance upon Dickens' work
• Have a rough patch
• Suffer poverty cultivating hostile farmland
• Have severe money troubles
• Eagerly begin novel and suffer
• Novel written later by jockey to become rich? On the contrary
• *Have serious financial setbacks
• Get into debt perhaps to devour work of Dickens
• Enter Queer Street to attack Dickens work
• Find difficulty in living in autumn on CD work