Dickens came to Folkestone many times. In 1853, he stayed for a few days holiday at the Pavilion Hotel. He was engaged at the time in writing 'A Child's History of England', and the town appears as Pavilionstone in his essay 'Out of Town' from the collection (Reprinted Pieces).
Returning in the summer of 1855 he rented number 3 Albion Villas, "a pleasant little house with the sea below and the scent of thyme sweetening the breezes from the downs". Although working furiously on the beginning of his novel Little Dorrit he found time for "swarming up the face of a gigantic and precipitous cliff" and could be seen many a day "from the British Channel, suspended in mid-air with his trousers very much torn at fifty minutes past 3pm".

Dickens in print:

The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens
John O. Jordan (Editor)
... contributions from a range of scholars, who together offer diverse approaches to the full span of Dickens's work, with particular focus on his major fiction. The essays cover the whole range of Dickens's writing, from "Sketches by Boz" through to "The Mystery of Edwin Drood".