The tumultuous life of England's greatest novelist, beautifully rendered by unparalleled literary biographer Claire Tomalin.
When Charles Dickens died in 1870, The Times of London
successfully campaigned for his burial in Westminster Abbey, the final
resting place of England's kings and heroes. Thousands flocked to mourn
the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England. His
books had made them laugh, shown them the squalor and greed of English
life, and also the power of personal virtue and the strength of ordinary
people. In his last years Dickens drew adoring crowds to his public
appearances, had met presidents and princes, and had amassed a fortune.
Like a hero from his novels, Dickens trod a hard path to
greatness. Born into a modest middle-class family, his young life was
overturned when his profligate father was sent to debtors' prison and
Dickens was forced into harsh and humiliating factory work. Yet through
these early setbacks he developed his remarkable eye for all that was
absurd, tragic, and redemptive in London life. He set out to succeed,
and with extraordinary speed and energy made himself into the greatest
English novelist of the century.
Years later Dickens's daughter
wrote to the author George Bernard Shaw, "If you could make the public
understand that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking
about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch, you would
greatly oblige me." Seen as the public champion of household harmony,
Dickens tore his own life apart, betraying, deceiving, and breaking with
friends and family while he pursued an obsessive love affair.
Charles Dickens: A Life
gives full measure to Dickens's heroic stature-his huge virtues both as
a writer and as a human being- while observing his failings in both
respects with an unblinking eye. Renowned literary biographer Claire
Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickens's own pen, a comedy that turns
to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great-his indomitable
energy, boldness, imagination, and showmanship-finally destroyed him.
The man who emerges is one of extraordinary contradictions, whose vices
and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.
The heart and soul of each generation is uncovered and chronicled with painstaking accuracy. But even in the cruel binding of young girls’ feet, or the deprivation of food and water, or the unspeakable cruelness of Mao’s regime, there is a hidden message of tenacity and endurance in these 3 unforgettable women. This is non-fiction that reads like a page turning novel. Wild Swans is a story of adventure, discovery, and amazing storytelling that lets the reader down a heavy dose of history while walking the footsteps of three generations of Chinese women. (Bonnie: Atlanta)
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