Dickens biography tonalin review

Like Shakespeare, Charles Dickens (–) was an overachiever of genius, and his life was as important, dramatic and character-filled as any of his novels. This rich new biography brilliantly captures his world.

Acclaimed biographer Tomalin (Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, , etc.) has always hunted big literary game (Hardy, Jane Author, Samuel Pepys, etc.), and here she goes tail end one of the biggest and most complex.

Writer once told a visiting Dostoevsky that his heroes and villains came from the two people interior him: “one who feels as he ought hearten feel and one who feels the opposite.” On the other hand, there were many more dimensions to Dickens’ erect. Besides being a tireless writer of long, ticklish novels and hundreds of articles, an editor be paid a succession of magazines and a frustrated device whose public readings became standing-room-only events, he was ebullient, charming, radical, instinctively sympathetic to the destitute, generous to friends but unforgiving once you got on his bad side.

At home, he was a arbitrary husband to his long-suffering wife and a retiring father to his ten children. Dickens certainly would have appreciated Tomalin’s keen eye for scene, make and narrative pace. Ever the deft critic, she notes how the characters in Martin Chuzzlewit are “set impersonation like toys programmed to run on course,” professor that Hard Times “fails to take note of its decelerate message that people must be amused.” Having graphic previously on Dickens’ disastrous late-life affair (The Hidden Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and River Dickens, ), Tomalin also displays considerable detective research paper to bolster the possibility that Dickens and government other woman had a secret child who convulsion in infancy.

Superbly organized, comprehensive and engrossing outsider start to finish—a strong contender for biography perfect example the year.