Charles Dickens: A Life - Softcover

Tomalin, Claire

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141036931 ISBN 13: 9780141036939

Publisher: Penguin, 2012

Synopsis

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

Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

About this title

Review:

"Clear-eyed, sympathetic and scholarly, she spreads the whole canvas, alive with incident and detail, with places and people. She writes of publishers, illustrators, collaborators and all Dickens's intersecting circles of friends and family. It is wonderfully done."
--THE ECONOMIST

"[A] splendid history... Tomalin skillfully presents the chief trauma of Dickens' young life -- being sent to work in a factory at age 12, after his father was imprisoned for debt -- and suggests the ways it left a lasting mark, from his sympathy for the working class to his towering ambition and herculean work ethic."--SEATTLE TIMES

"[O]nward-driving, hypnotically vivid... the result of Claire Tomalin's unrivalled talent for telling a story and keeping a reader enthralled long as the book is, I wanted more."--THE GUARDIAN (UK)

"As Claire Tomalin demonstrates in her vivid and moving new biography, Dickens s own life was rich in the attributes we call Dickensian shameless melodrama, gargantuan appetites, reversals of fortune... To encompass this frenzy, Tomalin keeps the story racing. She brings Dickens to life in all his maddening contradictions... Dickens walks off the page, and the pace never flags. Tomalin accomplishes this resurrection in a mere 417 pages of text, supplemented by dozens of illustrations, several maps of Dickens s London and a helpful dramatis personae... if you plan to read only one biography of the most popular Victorian writer, it should be this one."
--THE WASHINGTON POST
"Enormously ambitious... admirable... warmly sympathetic and often eloquent."
--Joyce Carol Oates, THENEWYORKREVIEWOFBOOK
Clear-eyed, sympathetic and scholarly, she spreads the whole canvas, alive with incident and detail, with places and people. She writes of publishers, illustrators, collaborators and all Dickens s intersecting circles of friends and family. It is wonderfully done.
--THE ECONOMIST
[A] splendid history Tomalin skillfully presents the chief trauma of Dickens' young life being sent to work in a factory at age 12, after his father was imprisoned for debt and suggests the ways it left a lasting mark, from his sympathy for the working class to his towering ambition and herculean work ethic.
--SEATTLE TIMES
"[O]nward-driving, hypnotically vivid the result of Claire Tomalin's unrivalled talent for telling a story and keeping a reader enthralled: long as the book is, I wanted more.
--THE GUARDIAN (UK) "

"As Claire Tomalin demonstrates in her vivid and moving new biography, Dickens s own life was rich in the attributes we call Dickensian shameless melodrama, gargantuan appetites, reversals of fortune... To encompass this frenzy, Tomalin keeps the story racing. She brings Dickens to life in all his maddening contradictions... Dickens walks off the page, and the pace never flags. Tomalin accomplishes this resurrection in a mere 417 pages of text, supplemented by dozens of illustrations, several maps of Dickens s London and a helpful dramatis personae... if you plan to read only one biography of the most popular Victorian writer, it should be this one."
--THE WASHINGTON POST

"Enormously ambitious... admirable... warmly sympathetic and often eloquent."
--Joyce Carol Oates, THENEWYORKREVIEWOFBOOK
Clear-eyed, sympathetic and scholarly, she spreads the whole canvas, alive with incident and detail, with places and people. She writes of publishers, illustrators, collaborators and all Dickens s intersecting circles of friends and family. It is wonderfully done.
--THE ECONOMIST
[A] splendid history Tomalin skillfully presents the chief trauma of Dickens' young life being sent to work in a factory at age 12, after his father was imprisoned for debt and suggests the ways it left a lasting mark, from his sympathy for the working class to his towering ambition and herculean work ethic.
--SEATTLE TIMES
"[O]nward-driving, hypnotically vivid the result of Claire Tomalin's unrivalled talent for telling a story and keeping a reader enthralled: long as the book is, I wanted more.
--THE GUARDIAN (UK) "

Book Description:

To avoid disappointment, please note that this book does not come with a Dust Jacket.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0141036931
• ISBN 13: 9780141036939
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576