Charles Dickens: A Life
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Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin
Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonicly hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all a great novelist – the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination: the Artful Dodger, Mr Pickwick, Pip, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Lady Dedlock, and many more.
At the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory by his affectionate but feckless parents. From these unpromising beginnings, he rose to scale all the social and literary heights, entirely through his own efforts. When he died, the world mourned, and he was buried – against his wishes – in Westminster Abbey.Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family in his writings, he took up passionately with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children.
From the award-winning author of Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens: A Life paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius. If you loved Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, this book is invaluable reading.
‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic account yet for the general reader’ Amanda Craig, New Statesman
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Additional information
| Publisher | 1st edition (21 Jun. 2012), Penguin |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 608 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0141036931 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0141036939 |
| Dimensions | 12.95 x 3.3 x 20.32 cm |
by Kneale Grainger
Firstly, this second-hand hardback is a gem in perfect condition.
It is so readable.
As a feminist, Miss Tomalin is aware of Dicken’s failings, duly notes them but does not let them spoil the bigger picture.
Some lesser known sides of his life are most interesting, his time in Italy, for instance.
Good as a straight read and also as a reference book.
by JuliaC
There is a definite skill to writing a great biography, and Claire Tomalin proves again with her latest work on the life of Charles Dickens that she has it in spades. Her books are always packed with meticulously researched detail, a genuine appreciation of her subjects and their lives, and above all are riveting reads.
Charles Dickens was possibly the most famous man of his age, and is still certainly one of our best loved and prolific enduring writers. Tomalin uncovers many fascinating aspects of his life with a sympathetic and affectionate eye, whilst not trying to cover up or excuse his many failings along the way. Chief of these has got to be the treatment he cruelly gave to his loyal wife Catherine, whom he was married to whilst still a young man, who bore him an energy sapping ten children and suffered many more heartbreaking miscarriages along the way. And when Dickens had grown tired of her and wanted to pursue a new, albeit secret, relationship with a young actress, Nellie Ternan, he was scathing and false in public about his wife’s part in their failed relationship. He does not seem to have paid much heed to Catherine or to many of the children, regarding some of them as surplus to requirements. And to add to Catherine’s misery, her own sister chose to stay living with Dickens after they parted rather than siding with her.
His affair with Nellie has been covered by Tomalin in great and painstaking detail by Tomalin in `The Invisible Woman’ and she does not go over all that old ground in as much detail here. Instead we get glimpses of the relationship that Dickens held most dear for the longest time, that of his deep friendship with John Forster. Dickens was an arrogant and vain man at his worst, and Forster seems to have been one of the very few people who were allowed to be honest with him about his own behaviour.
And quite how Dickens managed to write quite so many fabulous novels is enough to make you dizzy, as he had to fit the monthly or weekly instalments in which they were published into his hectic schedule including speaking tours at home and abroad; acting; contributing to and editing his own magazine; his family ties; and almost obsessive walking around and between his beloved Kent and London. Tomalin gives a great summary of each novel, woven in with the details of Dickens manic and fabulously successful life. She is honest about some of the failings of his stories, as well as making you want to read the most celebrated ones all over again. And this book reminds us that he wrote all his novels in instalments, week by week or month by month, and so could change the course of his stories according to the reaction of his devoted readership.
Dickens was obviously the kind of person who lit up a room, and who revelled in the limelight. But the book reveals some very odd traits in his character, like the yearlong `therapy’ he gave to the wife of a French banker, Augusta De La Rue, who was suffering from a mysterious nervous disorder. Dickens was not particularly qualified for the role, but he undertook to treat her nevertheless, and used mesmerism to help her to face whatever demons were haunting her.
His sense of social conscience and liberal reform, which is so clear in his fiction, was also present in his actions, as he devoted much time and energy to, for instance, a home for prostitutes to escape their profession. Tomalin succeeds in bringing the story and times of Dickens to life wonderfully on the page. This is a fabulous book, and well worth all the effort that she must surely have put in to create it.
by neutraltones
Claire Tomalin is one of my favourite biographers (her work on Jane Austen, for example, is outstanding) and this may be her best book yet, not least because she conveys so vividly and with such well-researched evidence the complexities and contradictions that made up the life and character of Charles Dickens, and reflects just the right amount of light on the novels where life and story meet.
In particular, she contrasts the genuine sympathy that Dickens felt for suffering humanity (which led him to generous acts of individual philanthropy and attention) with the cruel treatment of his wife Catherine, and his dismissive attitude to most of the males among his offspring, whom he considered as feckless as his own parents. Tomalin is illuminating too on Dickens’s egocentricity which lies at the centre both of his triumphs (his greatest characters, such as David Copperfield and Pip, carved from his own image; the huge success of his staged readings) and his failings (intolerance of those who would not bend to his will, obsessive acts of passion, revenge and pettiness). We see in Tomalin’s book the many shapes and faces of Dickens, but she also helps us make them whole.
She is at her most interesting and forensic in tracking the development and progress of Dickens’s long affair with the actress Ellen (Nelly) Ternan. Tomalin also drops tantalising hints about other possible sexual secrets – was Dickens a user as well as a protector of prostitutes? did he have a sexual relationship with his wife’s devoted younger sister, Georgina, or even with the youngest sister Mary Hogarth whose early death brought him an excess of grief and a long-held, strange desire to be buried alongside her? None of these hints is stretched beyond the limits of evidence, but lie glistening in the narrative. Tomalin is less revealing about wife Catherine after her separation from Dickens, which may be from paucity of evidence; it would seem that the deserted Catherine retreated into characteristic blandness without the flame of Dickens nearby.
It is sometimes said that “a biographer is an artist under oath”. Claire Tomalin never strays far into the realm of speculation, much less creative invention, but using only the material won by hard research that is nevertheless worked with a sure lightness of touch she keeps us engaged and unwearied, never feelng the weight of the patient hours she has spent creating a rich tapestry, one we are able to appreciate as much for its craft as its truth in the weft.
Reviewer David Williams blogs regularly as Writer in the North.
by jo cleobury
I loved this book so much. The authors style of writing is so so good,so much that I have now purchased her book about Thomas Hardy and bought a set of his books.