Charles Dickens
A Life
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain’s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life
‘Powerful and remarkable. It is a celebration of a great genius. No question: you put Tomalin’s book down knowing that you have met a living author’ Miriam Margolyes, The Times
‘By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic account yet for the general reader’ Amanda Craig, New Statesman
‘Tomalin has captured Dickens, in sun and shadow, with all the full-hearted exuberance, generosity and keen wit that he merits’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent
‘Written with immense knowledge… it presents a portrait of the novelist unrivalled in its complex humanity. Dickens lives and breathes in these pages. Engrossing’ William Boyd, Guardian, Books of the Year
Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonically 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: Ebenezer Scrooge, 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 contradictory character. In Charles Dickens: A Life, award-winning author Claire Tomalin paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, vividly capturing the complex character of this great genius.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"veryone finds their own version of Charles Dickens ," concludes award-winning British biographer Tomalin: Dickens the mesmerist, amateur thespian, political radical, protector of prostitutes, benefactor of orphans, restless walker all emerge from the welter of information about the writer's domestic arrangements, business dealings, childhood experiences, illnesses, and travels. Bolstered by citations from correspondence with and about Dickens, Tomalin's portrait brings shadows and depth to the great Victorian novelist's complex personality. Tomalin (Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self) displays her deep scholarship in reviewing, for instance, the debate about Dickens's relations with Nelly Ternan, concluding that the balance of evidence is that they were lovers. She also highlights the contrasts between his charitable actions toward strangers and his "casting off" of several relatives from father to brothers to sons, who kept importuning him for money: "Once Dickens had drawn a line he was pitiless." By the end of this biography, readers unfamiliar with Dickens will come away with a new understanding of his driven personality and his impact on literature and 19th-century political and social issues. Tomalin provides her usual rich, penetrating portrait; one can say of her book what she says of Dickens's picture of 19th -century England: it's "crackling, full of truth and life, with his laughter, horror and indignation." Illus.; maps.
