The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens

by Helena Kelly

A radical reassessment of the famed Victorian author, revealing the true story behind the creator of some of literature's best-known novels.

This dynamic new study of Charles Dickens will make readers re-examine his life and work in a completely different light. First, partly due to the massive digitalization of papers and letters in recent years, Helena Kelly has unearthed new material about Dickens that simply wasn't available to his earlier biographers. Second, in an astonishing piece of archival detective work, she has traced and then joined the dots on revelatory new details about his mental and physical health that, as the reader will discover, had a strong bearing on both his writing and his life and eventual death.

Together these have allowed her to come up with a striking hypothesis that the version of his life that Dickens chose to share with his public—both during his lifetime and from beyond the grave in the authorized biography published shortly after his death—was an elaborate exercise in reputation management. Many of the supposed formative events in his life—such as the twelve-year-old Dickens going to work in a blacking factory—may not have been quite as honestly-related as we have been led to believe.

And, in many respects, who can blame him? Dickens's celebrity was on a scale almost unimaginable to any author writing today, with the possible exception of J. K. Rowling, and, like many people who become suddenly famous, he soon realized what a mixed blessing it was.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Biography Memoir, Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2023

About the author

HELENA KELLY grew up in North Kent. She has taught classics and English Literature at the University of Oxford. She lives in Oxford with her husband and son.

Reviews

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you think you know a lot about Charles Dickens? Well, you know a little but you will learn more about his life while reading this book, and you are bound to be surprised by Dickens' skillful ways of covering his tracks.
Ms Kelly offers a most readable non-ficiton, based on her in-depth analysis and research of letters, newspapapers, parish records and more. I am not a great fan of his works, just enjoyed them, now, thanks to this book, I am planning to reread thick tomes, hoping to find traces of Ms Kelly's investigation and those of his family members or friends. Dickens seemed to have hidden the facts, or to have intentionally left avenues for interpretation, to say the least. Reasons? Of different nature, some too intimate, some too shameful to be revealed to public, especially one theory put forward by Ms Kelly in the last chapter sounds plausible to me. Recommended!
*Many thanks to Helen Kelly, icon Books, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review*.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating it 5 stars because I hate when people give a low rating on a book that’s not even out yet for no reason.

[Mervyn Eastman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps 2+2 does = 6, or 7,8 etc, but there again 4!

I have, over almost a quarter of a Century read numerous books, papers, academic works, & articles on Charles Dickens's life & works. Indeed, conducted my own research, published & even wrote & presented a 4 part radio series a few years back (East London Radio) in partnership with the Charles Dickens Museum. I am however no Dickens scholar and do not consider myself one.

I was so excited when I became aware of Helena Kelly's contribution to the immense Dickens literatary & biographical critiques a few months ago. I have now read it! I came to it with great expectations. Kelly has an easy & accessible writing style ( for an academic) & the proportion behind the book cannot be dismissed out of hand. She is honest, and some might say courageous. I was, not surprisingly, intrigued and impressed with her cogent arguments and if I'm honest there were few draw dropping moments, given we already knew much -good, and & ugly. I am yet to process those that I didn't know ( but had suspected) but the "secret of secrets" caused me not to rush to judgement either of Dickens nor indeed of Kelly.

This book is too important to ignore ( as some reviewers have). I congratulate it's author and recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in Dickens. Whether I agree with the fundamental propositions is irrelevant, readers make their own mind up. The book is a page turner, but also a significant critique. I look forward to reading the responses from The Dickens Fellowship, Dickensian experts & will value their insights.

Thank you Helena Kelly, you have produced a " blinder"

[Puffthemagicbunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: Dickens, narcissistic abuse.

Disclosure: I read The Pickwick Papers in the summer between 6th and 7th years and enjoyed it. Great Expectations was required reading in 7th year, I did not enjoy it. In 11th year A Tale of Two Cities / Great Expectations was required reading, I hated it. At some time I read A Christmas Carol, it is still a favourite of mine. Besides what I learned in 7th and 11th year I have read one other biography:Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens. I am not a Lit major.

The book was well written and accessible to a popular audience. There are footnotes, biography, and an index to aid a reader who wishes to do their own research. Is there a chance that Ms Kelly may have cherry picked the letters and newspaper articles. Of course. Could she have made some unsubstantiated accusations? Yes, she is human.

I do think she makes a good case for reexamining how we teach British Lit in pre-secondary education. In many ways I found the ongoing allegations of plagiarism more problematic than Charles' behaviour as far as teaching the novels. Dickens was the only British writer that I was required to read more than one novel. The only other English novels that were required reading were Silas Marner and Animal Farm. Which is arguably a biased view of Victorian England, and gives little insight to modern Britain, much less Britain or the United Kingdom.

The author also makes a good case that Dickens was preoccupied with his image both before and after his death. He seems to have actively stroven to have the press hear his side of the story and quash others. I don't believe the Ms Kelly used the word narcissist, but in her book Charles Dickens is almost a classic case. Many authors, of course, are narcissists, as are many people. That in itself should not prejudice a reader. An author who is constantly shopping an image should give a reader pause when reading the author's works. How do I understand A Christmas Carol in light of what I have read regarding his treatment of his wife and children?

Which again is the question, can a problematic person create a great work of art? How does the viewer understand that art?

I would like to hear the unwhitewashed story from Catherine Thomson Dickens nee Hogarth, Ellen Ternan, and Georgina Hogarth. It is a pity that so many letters were destroyed.

Of course, I will always read a Trollope novel over a Dickens any day. So I to am biased.

[Matt Glaviano]

I started on this and didn't find a lot of reason to read on.

I agree with Kelly's main idea. I've been reading through Forster's Life of Dickens as I read (or reread) Dickens' novels chronologically. To see it less and an act of biography than a piece of self promotion seems... actually, it seems pretty obvious. So much of Forster's writing is actually Dickens. Long quotations from the author's letters to Forster are, arguably, the appeal of reading Life of Dickens; it's often reading Dickens himself. To think of it more as brand protection - and, historically, brand creation - than biography isn't a stretch. It's merely self-evident.

In lieu of other factual resources to turn to about Dickens early life, folks have turned to Forster and made it somewhat authoritative. Duh. Anything else would be speculation based on even LESS reliable information, right?

That's where Kelly runs into problems for me. They don't seem to offer any kind of authoritative alternative to Forster. So much of what I read in this book was "perhaps," or "it could be." As chapters go along and Kelly builds on the already shaky ground that is their foundation, "could be" becomes "it is likely that." That's a problem for me. It's too speculative by half to offer anything that doesn't feel simply sensational. Even the title feels more like a "gotcha!" piece than authoritative criticism.

He says after 48 pages. I know, I know. I was not enjoying reading this book and didn't see that I was gonna get a lot more out of it. My time is better spent working on my upcoming work of criticism "The Life (AND MURDERS!) of Anthony Trollope."

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

Very enjoyable read, a lot of it based on theories and archives rather than hard facts necessarily, but I found it overall interesting and it does raise good questions and good points. I am not particularly familiar with Dickens' biography myself and only know what most people know, so it is difficult to comment on how much this book brings in terms of new ideas, but it was pleasantly written, seems well-researched and does ask many questions.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

[John Kyriacou · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe Dickens was a complex, contradictory, multi-faceted man. His treatment of his wife was exceptionally cruel. Dickens was also a liar (for example, his public statements in 1857 about his wife are a tissue of lies). His biographer Forster's book, is fascinating, but without doubt, a whitewash. 'The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens' presents itself as a corrective for Forster's book - 'the true story of Charles Dickens'. But it is almost entirely based on unverified, unsubstantiated, negative speculation.

There is a chapter dealing with the trauma Dickens suffered aged 12, when his parents went to debtors prison and he was pulled from school and sent to work at Warrens' Blacking Factory. The biographer states that the Warrens Factory events 'may not have happened'.

The biographer finds it 'quite hard to believe' the events are true because Dickens didn't tell Forster about a play at the Adelphi Theatre with a scene staged in Warrens which was on at the time Dickens was working there. I cannot detect how this is of any significance whatsoever. I do not find it hard in the slightest to believe that Dickens forgot about the play, even if he was aware of it at the time, which we don't know. When he wrote to Forster about Warrens Factory, he was recollecting the most traumatic period of his life. Why would a theatre show feature in his recollection at all?

The biographer also says that it is difficult to see in Dickens often 'cheerful' use of Warrens Factory 'the smarting sensitivity that you would expect' as another reason to doubt the recollections. However, 'black' or 'dark humour' is commonly displayed by traumatised people making light of their experiences, and it is considered to be a coping mechanism.

There is an alternative suggestion that Dickens perhaps had a job writing copy for Warrens later on when he was a teenager. But there is no evidence that Dickens was an advertising teenage whizz kid. One may as well argue that he ran away and joined the circus for a while too.

There are certainly inconsistencies with names and dates in Dickens story, agreed. He said himself that he wasn't sure how long he worked at Warrens, but memory is a fickle thing, especially when recollecting the long past, 25 years after the event.

I don't believe that Dickens didn't work for Warrens factory, as the argument is built on very questionable guesswork, with dozens of uses of the words 'may' 'might', 'perhaps', 'seem to' and 'could have'.

The biographer argues that Dickens' sister Harriet had some form of disability, and her existence was deliberately kept 'secret' by him. I do not believe that is true. The fact is that Forster does briefly mention Harriet. There she is, in black and white in Forster's biography for all to see.

There is no context in the deliberations about Harriet's early death at age 8 to explain how common childhood mortality was in the 19th Century. Harriet died in 1827, and under 5s mortality alone in 1830 was 309.17 per thousand births. Gladys Storey said in her book 'Dickens and Daughter' (1939), that Harriet died of smallpox (the information probably came from Dickens' daughter Katie). The most common cause of childhood death in the 19th century was infectious diseases, and Storey's explanation certainly fits the bill. As so much is made in this book about Harriet, why is this context and information not addressed, particularly as Storey's book is listed in the bibliography as a source?

We simply don't know if Harriet had some form of disability, as there is no information on which to make a judgement. One could argue anything, given the paucity of evidence. The book builds a whole hypothesis and explains passages in Dickens' books on the evidence of - basically nothing.

There is no evidence that Dickens was a physically abusive husband, as is hinted at.

There is no evidence that Dickens had 'an affair' with Maria Winter (all the evidence is to the contrary).

There is no evidence that Dickens' wife Catherine had an affair etc. I cannot detect why that is even mentioned, other than the biographer joining Dickens to drag Catherine through the mud.

I could go on with copious more examples. This book gets very wearisome, as does the negativity and constant doubt about almost everything Dickens wrote or said. It's absurd, if we weren't supposed to be taking it seriously.

When considering the death of Ellen Ternan and Dickens' illegitimate child in infancy, the biographer suggests an alternative - that the child could have survived until 1942. She brushes off the information about the death in infancy because it 'comes at us at several removes'. That isn't the case. Dickens' daughter Katie confirmed the death in infancy directly to both Gladys Storey and George Bernard Shaw. Katie was 19 when the Ternan/Dickens affair started and living in Dickens' household, a witness to all his behaviour in those years and up until his death. I personally don't doubt Katie's story from those two independent sources (but some do, calling it 'hearsay').

Only contemporaneous bad reviews of Dickens books are included in this biography, which provides only a partial, biased picture of his literary reception during his lifetime. That great book 'A Christmas Carol' is described as 'artistically, a step backwards' as it is similar to a former story in 'Pickwick Papers'. However, 'A Christmas Carol' is a far superior and developed work, especially with regard to the theme of social injustice and redemption. It's also one of the most influential and most loved books ever written. 'Little Dorrit' is criticised on the basis that it does not have a coherent plot and is 'truly terrible historical novel writing'. However, I believe most objective people would agree with George Bernard Shaw that the novel is "one of the greatest books ever written in the English language".

The biographer argues that Dickens' was anti-semitic and racist. In 'A Child's History of England' (1851 -53) Dickens expressed an abhorrence of persecution of Jews. He describes how Jews were "treated so heartlessly and had suffered so much" under Edward I; and he recounts a "dreadful murdering of the Jews" on the coronation of Richard I; a slaughter "which seems to have given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling themselves Christians". In 'Our Mutual Friend' Dickens highlights how the non-Jewish villain Fledgeby uses anti-semitic stereotypes against the Jewish character Riah, when Riah is entirely innocent, and it is Fledgeby himself who is the grasping character. I find those passages a very powerful description and indictment of anti-semitism in the Victorian era.

This book is built on a tower of supposition, whilst the flyleaf says that the book is 'the true story of the life of Charles Dickens'. The biographer says what she is presenting 'is Charles Dickens'. But the fact is that verifiable truth is largely absent, so, objectively, it really isn't Charles Dickens.

[Kevin Crowe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rarely review books that I don't like: life's too short. However, I will make an exception for Helena Kelly's hatchet job of a biography "The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens". We already know that Dickens was a very flawed individual who gaslighted his wife and treated his sons appallingly; he was a man with a massive ego who demanded that he got his own way and was probably not the sort of person I would want to spend too long with. None of this in any way impacts on his ability as a great writer, nor does it invalidate the positives in his personality and behaviour. We also know, without Kelly telling us, that Forster's biography of Dickens, published shortly after his death, is inaccurate in many ways. In particular, I think we owe much to Claire Tomalin's biography and research for an understanding of both Dickens' flaws and his positive side: his campaigning, his generosity, his shining a light on some dark aspects of Victorian society.

But Kelly goes further, casting doubt on the good he did and even attempting to destroy his reputation as a writer, and she does this with little evidence, lots of innuendo and unwarranted assumptions. It would take a lot more space and time than I have to challenge all her accusations, so I will concentrate on two: one that is laughable, the other the worse thing you can accuse a writer of.

Firstly, the laughable one. Apparently, according to Kelly, both Dickens and his wife had syphilis (though she isn't clear which of them brought the sexually transmitted infection into their relationship) and they passed syphilis on to at least some of their children. Her evidence for these assertions? Well, one piece of evidence is that some of his children died as babies or as young children or as young adults, arguing that such mortality is a feature of inherited syphilis. What she ignores is that infant mortality and the death of children and young adults was a feature of life in a society where there were few effective medical treatments and before antibiotics were developed. Many, if not most, families in the mid 19th century would have experienced loss through premature death and syphilis would have been an issue in only a few of those deaths. Her second piece of "evidence" is that some of the (often ineffective) medications that Dickens and his wife Catherine took were used to treat syphilis. This is true, but what she ignores is that these same medications were used to control or cure a vast range of conditions, including gout (which Dickens did suffer from), arthritis, heart disease, mental illness and others. These days, most STI's are treated with antibiotics, but antibiotics are also used to treat a lot of other infections (I have recently been on a course of antibiotics). Just as we cannot infer someone has syphilis or any other STI from them taking antibiotics, so it is equally invalid to assume that a 19th century person has syphilis because he uses a medication that also claims to cure gout.

Her second accusation is more serious: she claims that Dickens plagiarised the work of others. She makes this claim for many of his novels, from his first "Pickwick Papers" to his last, the unfinished "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". She claims that some of his greatest novels feature plagiarism, but again with little evidence. For example, she claims that much of the plot of "A Tale of Two Cities" comes from a popular play of the time "The Dead Heart", which is also set in revolutionary France and features an innocent man imprisoned for years. But many writers wrote about the French Revolution (included the Scottish philosopher Carlyle who was an influence on Dickens) and miscarriages of justice have been a feature of fiction from ancient times to the present. In any case, one of the key features of Dickens novel is that the aristocratic Charles Darnay has a doppelganger in the hedonistic lawyer "Sidney Carton", which leads to Carton taking Darnay's place at the guillotine.

She also claims that Dickens stole from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and Elizabeth Gaskell's "Mary Barton" for two of his finest novels: "David Copperfield" and "Bleak House". Her evidence for this is slight, to say the least. For example, she uses as evidence that the heroine in "Jane Eyre" was a governess, a form of domestic servant, just as Esther Summerson was in "Bleak House" and that both have a relationship with their respective masters. Again, stories about relationships between servants and their masters or mistresses have been common from the time of Homer to the present day (and one such novel - D H Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" - was in the mid-29th century subject to a famous obscenity trial).

She also claims that elements of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" were taken from Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone", for example they both include descriptions of opium dens, but such descriptions were common at the time, perhaps most famously of all in De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (1821). She also claims that the illustrator Robert Seymour, who provided some of the early illustrations for "Pickwick Papers" before he committed suicide (Seymour had a history of depression), was responsible for some of the plotlines in Dickens' first novel. But there was a division of labour between them with Seymour responsible for the illustrations and Dickens for the words, and Seymour received his due credit for the images he produced (as did all of Dickens illustrators).

The allegations of him stealing from Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins are particularly risible, given that Dickens was to a large degree responsible for the popularity of both writers: he published their work in his journals "Household Words" and "All The Year Round", he actively promoted the work of both writers and he collaborated with Wilkie Collins on some of his projects.
If we are to accuse of Dickens of plagiarism, them we might just as well with more evidence accuse Shakespeare, who borrowed stories from various sources and turned them into some of the greatest poetry this country has produced. The fact is that neither Dickens nor Shakespeare were plagiarists: they just did what writers of all eras (including me) have always done - attempt to create something original out of the world around us, in the process inevitably being influenced by others who are or were doing the same thing.

This is a hatchet job best avoided. If you want the most authoritative account of the life and art of Dickens, the best account is still Claire Tomalin's critical, but well-researched biography.

[Rachel N · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot in this book which is interesting and sounds like it may be plausible but in the end it really didn't convince me. Helena Kelly is obviously very knowledgeable about the books of Charles Dickens and uses a lot of examples to highlight her theories but I didn't fully agree with some of her premise - many people have looked at the life of Charles Dickens as a source of inspiration for his writing (as happens with many other authors) but Kelly turns this on its head at times and seems to use the books as a way of finding out more about Dickens' life, which seems wholly unreliable to me. The title is very obviously chosen to take a side and catch attention but the content did little to persuade me.

A lot of what is supposedly uncovered as showing Dickens to be telling lies is unsubstantiated by any evidence and is based purely on supposition by the author. For example, she has a theory that he may have worked in a boot blacking factory as a writer of advertising copy but says "we can't be sure when or even whether this happened" - the use of phrases like this and the repeated use of 'perhaps' make it difficult to trust as a source for information. If there is evidence to back up some of the author's suspicions, it is certainly not provided and in too many cases there is an issue of correlation not being the same as causation - the theories may be interesting but that is very much all they are and need a lot more research. It feels as though the author is determined to discover new material or show Dickens in a new light and does this based on her personal reading of a situation rather than any actual evidence.

There are also some throwaway comments that seemed to me to be unnecessary - talking about his wife Catherine and her propensity to fall and trip and bruise herself, there is a comment "If the injuries weren't all to do with Catherine's feet, this could come across as an abusive husband's explanation of how his wife keeps walking into walls." There is no suggestion of physical violence and another possible explanation is later given so why make an inflammatory comment like that at all?

There are many times the behaviour of Dickens seems strange but other plausible theories aren't ever really mentioned - there are theories of whether he may have been bipolar and the level of his fame and the way the public/press often try to knock down those who become successful is interesting but never really covered.
Kelly seems to be determined to ensure Dickens is coming out in a bad light - there was talk at the time of possible plagiarism by him, and that is covered, as is jealousy of other authors, but the fact that he is publishing other authors at all and working with them doesn't get as much attention.

At the end of the day, I came out of this book unsure what I could trust as accurate and feeling very much that I got a side that had set out to prove theories the author had come up with, rather than following where the evidence may lead. Dickens burned a lot of material relating to his life so it is possible we will never really know exactly what happened or perhaps future research will prove/disprove these theories, but at the moment there is just not enough evidence to convince me of any of it.

I have no particular love of the work of Dickens - I have read and enjoyed a few and have obviously seen multiple versions of A Christmas Carol - but this felt more like an author trying to say something outrageous to stand out in a crowded field, rather than producing a particularly interesting or revealing biography.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

#TheLifeandLiesofCharlesDickens #NetGalley

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I love Dickens’s novels. I reread several of them every year. I have several thick biographies of him on my shelves, and am quite sure that he is NOT someone I’d want to have dinner with, and his egotism, faithlessness, and treatment of his wife and children were atrocious. And I STILL adore his novels. I finally checked this new bio out after long hesitation. A Dickens scholar I admire and have had some brief and friendly email correspondence with published a critical review. But if I want to consider myself a fairly knowledgeable fan, I felt I was obliged to at least have a look.

The title and cover of the book flag its apparent intent: “Life and Lies,” with LIES highlighted. Helena Kelly seems to come at this with an agenda to ferret out every inconsistency, contradiction, or lacuna in the evidence surrounding CD’s life, and then posit her own possible explanations for them. And almost always to CD’s detriment. She has delved into archival files, memoirs, and other documentation to try to assemble a factually supported chronology of his life: exactly where he lived during what dates, the composition of family and connections’ relationships, backing up the details of what he told his first biographer and faithful friend Forster decades later, matching others’ recollections, etc. All of which is a very useful endeavor. The bits and pieces and scraps are jiggered and lined up, and yes, indeed, there are gaps and mismatches. The trouble is what she makes of them.

It feels like Kelly is setting out to come up with possibilities chosen to stand out as iconoclastic and different from conventional wisdom whenever possible. If a point can be stretched, she will stretch it. The text is riddled with “might have,” “could have,” “possibly,” “can be imagined,” and “what if.” Whatever facts are available to her are plot points for her to string into stories of her own making. The childhood death of CD’s little sister Harriet is spun into a scenario of a disabled child that no one would talk about, in an era when as many as 30% of children in London died before they were five, and about whom CD’s daughter Katie said she had died of smallpox. What is the point of that? Kelly sets out to suggest that CD either actually never worked in the blacking warehouse at all, that a family connection who helped arrange it didn’t exist, or that if he did, he was hired as a teenage ad writer. And her use of CD’s fiction is cherry-picked: examples are selected to support or deny her theories depending on whether they make CD look bad. At one point, she uses the fact that CD named a character convicted of embezzling “John” to support her proposition that CD’s father John may have been involved in an embezzlement scheme himself… as though “John” wasn’t the second-most common men’s name in the UK in 1850.

I was done. If the first two sections were so rife with speculation, far-fetched theories, and suppositions (“we may be intended to read…Miss Pross as Jewish…” because she has red hair? Is Uriah Heep Jewish too then?), I’d had enough. Kelly may have provided fodder for a lot of alternative history, and marshaled some useful data and documentation, but the use she makes of them smacks of ego and a foregone agenda. Even as CD has provided me with countless hours of joy, admiration, and contentment, I am very aware of many of his failings. But this book started to feel like an exercise in an imaginative hatchet job based on too little.

[Rebecca Fung · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book hard to review and I've given it a 3 star though I felt more like it was a 2.5. I've rounded it up mainly because I felt that some of my suspicions I can't really know to much about. I don't really know much about Charles Dickens.

Probably this doesn't make me a very good reviewer. I've read some of Charles Dickens' works - the obvious ones. The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities. I've heard of many others and they are on the to-read list. But I'm by no means a Dickens expert having only read some of his most famous works and having heard pretty much nothing about his life.

The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens, as I read it, seemed to assume that the reader had heard something of Dickens' life and set about to debunk those stories. I hadn't built up any picture of the writer to debunk, though of course like many others I knew him as a very prolific writer who had contributed a lot to English literature.

Then Helena Kelly takes us on a tour of Dickens' life and a lot of it is about tearing the man down. She has theories about him being anti-Semitic, an abuser, a thief (of other writers' work), often insecure and paranoid, someone who didn't look after his family very well, a cheater and so on.

I wasn't expecting Dickens to be a perfect man but this really did set out to show as much mud as possible. Were the theories correct? I really don't know enough about Dickens to say. I don't even know enough about the alternative theories on him.

The problem I had with Kelly's theories were that they were mainly phrased as suppositions. There were some ideas that were mainly written as "probably" or just flung out some ideas that maybe Dickens could have been this. I felt like I was in one of those amateur detective stories where the detective puts together a theory about how the murderer "done it" based mainly on motive and opportunity "Mrs Gilligan always wanted revenge from that episode 2 years ago and she could have slipped into the library as we've established the door to the library is in shadow ..." and then hopes that the accused jumps up and admits it. But this time, of course, Charles Dickens is long past and wont' be doing any jumping up and saying "You got me."

The book seemed to be quite selective on areas to grab at Dickens and show "truth" - only when something was quite sensational. It didn't seem to be at all a balanced biography. Maybe it only intended to be a mythbuster for certain well-known myths but I am not well-versed enough to know what are the well-known stories of Charles Dickens and his life.

All in all it seemed a little too unbalanced and relying on hypothesis to me. On the other hand, it was compelling reading in parts and I did get some ideas about some of the background to Charles Dickens' life which I'm pretty sure are facts. I wouldn't recommend this as a newcomer like me to Charles Dickens' life but possibly the idea of another point of view is useful to those who've read many similar views on Dickens - it's good to get many perspectives then try to filter through and figure out which pieces are actually true.

[Paul Sutter]

There is little question that Charles Dickens was one of the most notable writers in history. Few can forget characters from his plethora of books, among them Ebenezer Scrooge, David Copperfield, The Artful Dodger and many others. His books certainly stand the test of time.
Now we have a book that challenges some of his greatest creations. Will it withstand the test of time as well? Helena Kelly who wrote the book Jane Austen The Secret Radical, to much acclaim, sets her sights on the beloved Charles Dickens. It lays bare and disputes some of the claims that were made by John Forster, who wrote a highly regarded biography not long after the death of Dickens, who was his good friend.
In THE LIFE AND LIES OF CHARLES DICKENS, Kelly paints a rather dismal picture about the man who was considered a very bright light in English literature. With such books as A CHRISTMAS CAROL, OLIVER TWIST, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, and NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, among others, his works are studied at every level of educational halls. But Kelly cites a lot of issues that affected the life of Dickens, sort of souring the love affair on many fronts.
Dickens apparently had mental issues when he was not yet a teen, and his parents were going through dire financial issues. They were sent to a debtor’s prison, while Charles went to work in Warren’s Blacking Factory. Now Kelly says that may have been fabricated. There was much trauma that followed Charles through his life, including the death of a younger sister at age 9. But Charles often acted as if she never existed, acccording to the author.
It was said that many of the notable characters in his plays were based on actual people, using their infirmities or issues in their lives as inspiration. Kelly for the most part takes issue with the Forster biography, which has been taken as gospel about Dickens for almost a century and a half. But in some of her writing, Kelly muses about possible issues about Dickens, and speculates about topics such as Dickens had mental and physical problems affecting his health and life.
Controversy does sell books, and there has been speculation of Dickens plagiarizing other works, having affairs, having sexual issues and the like. But these are "maybes" and "what ifs?" It is up to the reader to draw conclusions, but still does not take away from the fact that Charles Dickens was responsible for so many endearing works of literature. And we will remember them long into future centuries.

[George Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was walking by a local bookstore the other day, wow, they still exist?!, here in Montreal, and saw this book. I bought it immediately. The owner told me he'd just put it into the window. Why did I buy it, knowing nothing about it? Because I trust modern scholarship to tell me things that lazier, less rigourous researchers did in earlier books.

Kelly writes like a pathologist, saying what she knows, what she doesn't know, and why she does and doesn't. She is not only careful, she is downright warmly sincere, which I appreciate.

I mean kicking the stuffing out of Dickens's first biographer is a good deed. And holding up to sterilizing light the miserable maybe story of poor Dickens sticking labels on bottles, well that's a good thing too. Kelly uses the word "branding" as if it is just perfect for a writer like Dickens and I sincerely agree. Many people think people a few hundred years ago were not as commercially intelligent as we supposedly are. Ha! In the days of Me Too movements celebrity is largely bullshit and needs to be translucent or people get hurt. I can understand in Victorian society why Dickens would want to both keep his privacy and lie through his teeth to keep it, that being a wickedly hypocritical society! And I can understand and appreciate as well, the industrious, serious, incredibly foot-noted research that Kelly has done to share her view of Dickens and his behaviour.

Sure there is much left unknown, unknowable, about Dickens's life and Kelly is neither dishonest or pandering. She is simply stating what she found, what she thinks about what she found, and sharing it in a wonderfully succinct and forceful manner.

You can take her opinion or not, but you sure know why she has it and that the research it is based upon is to be respected. No false news here.

I am impressed how THIN the book is. I think she threw out the fat and kept only the sinews that make this book a delightful exploration of what Dickens was doing to maintain his fame during and even after his life.

Thank you, Helena Kelly, for giving literary studies both rigor and the human touch! I understand your reasoning and I feel your personality, which makes for a very pleasant read!

[Cynthia Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a comprehensive biography of Charles Dickens. At best, it deals with sporadic incidents in his life. The use of primary sources is extensive, and I understand that in many cases these are primary sources that have only recently been made available. With the exception of Forster, few other biographers or Dickensonian experts are mentioned.

This is an interesting book. I learned facts about Dickens that I had not known. The prose is taut, but not overly scholarly. It is appropriate for the average Dickens enthusiast. I appreciated the author's commentaries on Dicken's works and how they related to his life, even when I disagreed with her conclusions.

My biggest problem with the book and the reason for the low rating is the author's tone. From the very onset, she has nothing good to say about Dickens. She can't even maintain that he was an above par writer. After a while the berating and vitriol is just tedious.

The role of a biographer is to research, investigate and memorialize the life of an individual honestly and without prejudice. While the author has done an admirable job of researching and investigating, her memorialization of Dicken's life is spotty and certainly not without prejudice. The author never met a conspiracy she didn't like. When it comes to Dickens, she has found a number of them and those she didn't find,, she created. All of them show him in an unfavorable light and many of them are based more on supposition and inuendo than fact.

The title of Kelly's book is The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens. She is guilty of stating and possibly perpetuating some lies herself. Certainly she makes a number of spurious allegations. This book is a litany of seems, might indicates, possiblies, might be's, could be's, we can only imagines, and let us assumes. Of course, none of these are facts and much like The Morning Post, the author is "ever on the lookout for an opportunity to stick a knife in Dickens.

A little more honesty and alot more fairness would have been appreciated and made for a more intellectual and openminded review of a complex and important life.

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book about the lies of Charles Dickens and Helena Kelley delivers on that premise. I’m not in a position to evaluate her arguments, but it’s hard to take it whole since Kelly seems to go overboard. Maybe her editors kept pushing her for more.

The author's critique goes beyond the theme of "the lies".

• I didn’t keep track, but her sample of reviews from the time show Dickens heavily panned. If this is his reception, how did he become so popular?

• What writer of fiction has not used experiences or people from his/her own life in their work? Isn’t one of the principles of writing: “Write what you know”?

• Is it fair to criticize a novelist for writer’s block? Or for not producing on extended trips with wife and 6 (?) kids?

• Is there anything wrong with co-writing?

• There is circumstantial innuendo that didn’t seem to add up to much. For instance the suicide of Robert Seymour (Illustrator of the “Pickwick Papers”), the existence of a sister, Harriet, who died young or Charles's embarrassment for the misdeeds of his father.

Among all this, Kelly makes a good case for some negatives: his horrid treatment of his wife, his passing his VD to others and the depth of the secretive affair with Ellen Ternan to name a few. The flirtations with 2 sisters-in law and possible infidelity are also well described.

This is a book about lies, so Dickens’s project, along with Angela Coutts, to educate incarcerated women for service careers is referenced, but is not covered. It may have been a PR project (a lot of philanthropy is) but it took time and expense.

There is a lot of research here. Some is forensic and some traces Dickens through his novels. There are good footnotes leaving a trail for others to follow.

For me, Dickens is far more interesting than his novels.

While there are "lies" and misleads, this does not seem to be a fair treatment.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

“As we uncover more of Dickens's lies, we uncover even more complexity and skill in his writing. There is truly remarkable craftsmanship in his weaving together of truth and fiction, personal memory and literary tropes, outrageous sentimentality and cold-blooded commercialism.”

The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens feels a little like reading a Kitty Kelley Tell-All. Remember her? Author Helena Kelly (certainly no relation, I’m sure) doesn’t put a lot of stock in John Forster, critic and friend of Charles Dickens who wrote the first and most widely accepted biography of the famous author. She uses news accounts, letter excerpts and a good dose of conjecture to counter much of the story Forster tells us. I’m not saying it’s not super-interesting. It is; but at times it feels a little like a hatchet job.

If you’re familiar with the works of Dickens, you’ll enjoy reading snippets of actual 19th century literary criticism of his work. Surprisingly enough, it can get pretty brutal. Plus, the author sprinkles numerous references to Dickens’s novels and characters throughout, that may or may not reveal autobiographical details. I’ve only read a handful of Dickens (the usual suspects—Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities), but as a lit nerd who knows about many of his works, I found this aspect of the book quite entertaining. I’m tempted to reread Great Expectations just to refresh myself on all the details I’m unable to conjure from my 14-year-old self.

Only about 260 pages long, it’s a quick read—especially with the extensive notes section in each chapter.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely fascinating. A quite savage questioning of everything that we think we might know about Dickens and what the usually accepted “truth” about him actually is. So many lies, secrets, obfuscations and deceptions. Deliberate twistings of the truth in order to maintain his brand image. I don’t have the requisite knowledge to know whether any of Kelly’s many assertions can be challenged or not, I don’t know enough to question her research, but it all sounded very convincing and plausible to me. She’s obviously gone through the research with a fine toothed comb and sometimes she comes to often startling conclusions. The reader must judge for his or her self. I found the book enormously interesting, a real page-turner, and was excited to have so many of my previous ideas and assumptions challenged.

[Cheryl Beseler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of what we know and what we think we know about Charles Dickens. This was an interesting read because it provided me an insight and history into his novels that I had not contemplated. It is a story of secrets and intrigue about a writer who was far more famous in his time than I realized. It is a well-crafted critical examination of what might have been true and what was embellished or dismissed from Dickens' life story. How Dickens wanted to control the narrative of his life story and how he did this was also quite a tale. The book provides recommendations of which of Dickens' novels are worth the time spent reading them and which you may want to pass on. His works were lengthy, but he also wrote many short stories that are not as well publicized.

[Ron Hayes · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you had a dollar for every time this alleged scholar has to say "may have," "could have," "possibly" or "might," to make an argument, you could buy a complete set of Dickens's works. In hardcover. This is a feeble attempt to extricate Dickens's alleged "lies" by drawing inferences from his writings, as if every novel were a map of the author's subconscious, rather than the product of his glorious imagination. If you want to read a reliable life of Dickens, stick with Claire Tomalin's "Charles Dickens: A Life."

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

All the uncertainties and conjectures wore me down after a while. I think good biography walks a fine line between verifiable factual reporting and propaganda (whether hagiography or hatchet-job). This author doesn't bother with the tightrope, plops firmly down on the propaganda side. This book could be used as justification for all those people who say ooh no, they would never read Dickens - maybe that's the point of it. You could easily write a similar tract on the life of Fyodor Dostoevsky, arguably the greatest novelist who ever lived. Whether you would want to is another matter entirely.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rather than a carefully researched reassessment of Dickens based on what purports to be new documentary evidence, this book is just a mind-numbing diatribe against him.

[Radhika Ramnath · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really could not see the point of this book. Clearly I am not the intended audience. But I could not even figure out who is...

[Adele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting added information to what we know of the life of Dickens. It raises questions and offers new views of what we know to be a complicated life.

[Jean Mehochko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of supposing, conjecturing, hypotheses. Makes the case for several possibilities but no real proof in the end.

[Linda Gaines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of new research on the life of this very famous author. He didn't act as a good family man.

[Nigel Ewan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rolling my eyes at this whiny, complaining book. The author clearly hates Dickens and feels compelled to criticize him even while relating his triumphant moments. Two stars because Dickens is always fun to read about, even when refracted through whatever the heck this lens is.

[Alexander Petkovski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helena Kelly's "The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens" is a recent addition to Dickensian biographies, offering a distinctive portrayal of the Victorian author that diverges from the standard narrative. This chronological exploration of Dickens' life takes a unique approach by scrutinizing every aspect, aiming to shed light only on the negative facets of his character.

Kelly does make compelling arguments at times, offering insightful critiques of Dickens' actions and motivations. However, the biography often ventures into the realm of the exaggerated, as some of the accusations leveled against Dickens are so far-fetched and they border on the absurd.

I acknowledge that Dickens was a complex individual with notable flaws, but the biography seems to lack a balanced appreciation for his literary contributions. Notably absent from the narrative is any recognition of the enduring impact and literary legacy Dickens has left on the literary world, from "The Pickwick Papers" to "The Mystery of Edwin Drood".

Despite its critical stance, the book does offer commendable qualities. Kelly's writing is captivating, and her extensive research is evident. Surprisingly, the biography reads with the pace of a novel, making it an engaging and accessible exploration of Dickens' life. I would just recommend to sometimes set aside your belief on certain things.

[AGMaynard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well laid out and meticulously researched and footnoted examination of Charles Dickens, his life, and his lies. Because I dislike what I know about Dickens (and his writing) this was delightful, and will provide facts for future discussion and perhaps even study. Recommended! Especially interesting as a Victorian example of image-shaping of a famous person who provided distracting information to hide likely secrets.