Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens - Softcover

Robert Gottlieb

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250039460 ISBN 13: 9781250039460

Publisher: Picador, 2014

Synopsis

Charles Dickens, famous for the indelible child characters he created - from Little Nell to Oliver Twist and David Copperfield - was also the father of ten children (and a possible eleventh). What happened to those children is the fascinating subject of Robert Gottlieb's Great Expectations. With sympathy and understanding he narrates the highly various and surprising stories of each of Dickens' sons and daughters, from Kate, who became a successful artist, to Frank, who died in Moline, Illinois, after serving a grim stretch in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Each of these lives is fascinating on its own. Together they comprise a unique window into Victorian England as well as a moving and disturbing study of Dickens as a father and as a man.

About this title

Review:

[An] easygoing, elegant, and surprisingly fascinating book.--The Washington Post. Ingenious...It throws light not only on the novelist himself, but also on the range of influence parents and home life can have on offspring.--Colm Toibin, The New York Review of Book. An irresistibly readable new book.--Salon. An accessible, sharply focused, and opinionated portrait of what the magical but dominating father wrought at home...[Gottlieb] brings an enticingly light touch to his scholarship, resulting in a book that reads like haute literary gossip.NPR --Various

About the Author:

Robert Gottliebhas been the editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker. He is the author of Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhard, George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker, and Lives and Letters (FSG, 2011), and is the dance critic for The New York Observer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1250039460
• ISBN 13: 9781250039460
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256