A brilliantly balanced, major critical biography of England's
greatest and most popular novelist. Drawing on new material,
including Dickens' unpublished letters, Kaplan (Thomas Caryle: A
Biography, 1983) masterfully recounts the life of the literary
genius who was far more fascinating, dark, and complex than his
adoring public was ever led to believe. The facts of Dickens' life
are well documented, but Kaplan manages to make them seem fresh and
arresting. He begins by detailing Dickens' childhood, marred by his
father's improvidence and imprisonment for debt and by Dickens'
being forced to work in a blacking (shoe polish) factory, for which
he never forgave his mother. Kaplan goes on to recount Dickens'
ambivalent relationship with Catherine Hogarth, mother of his ten
children, whom he cruelly rejected after 16 years of married life;
his secret liaison with the very young and beautiful actress Ellen
Ternan; and his attachment to his wife's sisters, Mary and
Georgina, who, in contrast to the prosaic and always pregnant
Catherine, became idealized in his mind into what Kaplan calls "the
loyal, loving slim sister wives." As Kaplan makes clear, Dickens'
optimism and aura of Victorian respectability were often at odds
with his restlessness and craving for romantic fulfillment,
psychological conflicts that he often explored in his fiction. A
highly readable and enjoyable primer for a new generation of
Dickensians; required reading also for those familiar with the
twists and turns of the master's life and art. (Kirkus Reviews)
From a bitter childhood mired in poverty and hard work to a
career as the most acclaimed and best-loved writer in the
English-speaking world, Charles Dickens had a life as tumultuous as
any he created in his teeming novels of life in Victorian England.
And no one has captured the rich texture of this life as colorfully
and persuasively as Fred Kaplan in this acclaimed biography.
Drawing on unpublished and long-forgotten sources, Kaplan presents
a full-scale portrait of Dickens and his world. From the
autobiographical basis of his novels and his extraordinary circle
of friends to the course of his unhappy marriage and complicated
family relations, Kaplan reveals the restless compulsions, private
passions, and professional concerns that drove Dickens to
unprecedented literary success. Kaplan details Dickens's often
stormy dealings with his publishers and his carefully cultivated
relationship with readers, heightened through amateur theatricals
and numerous public readings in Britain and North America.
Brilliantly written and thoroughly researched, "Dickens" provides
an absorbing and perceptive account of its subject as a singularly
complex man and a consummate artist, offering readers new insights
into Dickens's--and literature's--greatest works, works such as
"Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, " and "Oliver
Twist."
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