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Dickens: A Biography
The engaging biography of one of the most celebrated and enduring authors of Western literature Charles Dickens grew up in harsh poverty and became one of the world’s most beloved authors. Biographer Fred Kaplan takes a brilliant, multifaceted approach in his examination of Dickens’s his fraught marriage and relationships; the ever-present effects of his humble beginnings; his extensive, but carefully managed, public life; and his friendships with famous writers. Dickens unearths the complex passions that drove both the man and his work, illuminating why the legendary author—just like the characters in his fiction—has remained a mammoth figure in Western literature.
848 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 28, 2018
“He took special pleasure in disappointing expectations.”
A monumental work, in both the positive and negative senses. Like many modern biographers, Kaplan includes all manner of trivia and tangential material to pad the overall product. The result is boring to read, but fascinating to reflect on.
William Gladstone reported Dickens remarked that while his “faith in the people governing, is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed is on the whole illimitable.”
“All crisis was a spur to creativity, all fiction a mirror of imaginative distortion in which the model of his own life became a portrait of his culture and his world.”
Charles Dickens was that rare man who was lionized by his contemporaries, private and public. He had a hard life, chronicled in his many semi-autobiographical novels; he had great popularity and success. Many friends adored him; most of his family disappointed him. Kaplan reports he led a double or triple life, keeping his personal thoughts and activities private while publicizing a self-made image and life which was at least partly fictitious.
“Generous when unchallenged, his notion of compromise was total victory.”
He could bear a grunge, and he lived long enough to rewrite the history of himself and many around him.
“These are the ways of Providence, of which ways all art is but a little imitation.” Charles Dickens
A monumental work, in both the positive and negative senses. Like many modern biographers, Kaplan includes all manner of trivia and tangential material to pad the overall product. The result is boring to read, but fascinating to reflect on.
William Gladstone reported Dickens remarked that while his “faith in the people governing, is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed is on the whole illimitable.”
“All crisis was a spur to creativity, all fiction a mirror of imaginative distortion in which the model of his own life became a portrait of his culture and his world.”
Charles Dickens was that rare man who was lionized by his contemporaries, private and public. He had a hard life, chronicled in his many semi-autobiographical novels; he had great popularity and success. Many friends adored him; most of his family disappointed him. Kaplan reports he led a double or triple life, keeping his personal thoughts and activities private while publicizing a self-made image and life which was at least partly fictitious.
“Generous when unchallenged, his notion of compromise was total victory.”
He could bear a grunge, and he lived long enough to rewrite the history of himself and many around him.
“These are the ways of Providence, of which ways all art is but a little imitation.” Charles Dickens
October 29, 2021
There are many things about this biography that make it fascinating but the obsession with Dickens as a man rather than as a writer makes it flawed and unbalanced.
Much of what I already knew about Dickens (his father was a financial disaster, he was traumatised by being taken from school and sent to work in a factory with lower class children, he was an instantly successful novelist, he worked hard and wrote copiously, he loved amateur theatricals, he rejected his wife of twenty years and ten children in favour of a young actress) is repeated in this biography. It is all part of the myth. It must be difficult to write a Life of Dickens without repeating the same old stuff.
What surprised me was the emphasis on the spare-time activities of the novelist. Kaplan gives us chapter and verse of his holidays, his friendships, his business arrangements, his amateur theatricals etc. There is much less about the activity that dominated his life: his writing.
The book is far more interested in the later works. For example, there is no plot summary of Nickleby or Chuzzelwit but more than three pages are devoted to the plot of Great Expectations. Not only is this manifestly unfair, but I would argue that the first two books are far less well known that the last, so Kaplan seems to be telling the reader what the reader already knows.
I suppose that Kaplan's biographer's instinct seeks to uncover the links between reality and fiction. For the later books, say from Bleak House onwards, Kaplan explains where the theme comes from (eg Hard Times which is about the conditions of the industrial revolution is inspired by a strike in Preston) and the model for many of the characters (Leigh Hunt for Horace Skimpole in Bleak House) but it would appear that the earlier books (Pickwick, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby) were spontaneously generated.
What interests me, as an author, is how Dickens honed his craft. Kaplan tells us: "In the novels that were to follow [David Copperfield] ... he was to use autobiographical tonalities for more subjective portraiture and psychological dramatization than in his earlier work." (7.3) He also reveals that , in the run up to writing Little Dorrit, "Dickens had begun to jot down ideas for stories and character sketches and lists of titles and names for characters in a small notebook ... He had never before kept a working notebook." (10.2) But, again, these considersations are dwarfed by discussion of Dickens travelling in Paris.
As for specifically technique-based discussion, all I could find was that Kaplan talks about the use of dual narrators (omniscient and first person) in Bleak House (but doesn't tell us how or why Dickens chose that difficult technique) and that "Collins' major objection to Dickens' fiction ... was that he did not tell his audience enough. For Collins, the art of fiction demanded a series of self-conscious signposts directing the reader toward an unraveling of a well-constructed plot. For Dickens, plot revelations needed to rise organically from the interaction of characters in a narrative pattern in which suggestion and symbol appealed to the reader's intuition." (12.3).
Perhaps I was hoping for too much. Perhaps biography can't deliver a connection between an author's life and the development of his craft; perhaps this link is too subtle to leave traces. But there were moments in this biography when I wondered whether writing was part of what Dickens did.
As for the person, he certainly emerges as a rather unpleasant man. His vindictiveness when he ditched his wife was horrid: he ditched his long-standing publishers, his partners in a magazine, to their great cost, when they refused to print a self-serving statement about his marriage in Punch, the humorous magazine, which they owned, on the grounds that it wasn't humour. He was determined to squash the rumours that he was separating from his faithful wife to have an affair with a much younger woman because he was fearful that allegations of impropriety would damage the Dickens 'family values' brand. He demanded his children (except for his eldest son) stayed with him and never saw their mother. His daughter, Kate, is reported in this biography as saying: "My father was like a madman when my mother left home ... The affair brought out all that was worst - all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us." (11.3)
He was hugely money-motivated. He took on far more work than a normal person could cope with because he was desperate for money. He couldn't resist the lure of reading tours, although he was advised against them as they made him very ill and perhaps shortened his life, because of the huge incomes they generated even when he was already hugely rich. I suppose he was haunted by the memories of his debt-ridden childhood.
He was ashamed of his sons. "Having been born to neither wealth nor title, his sons, Dickens assumed, should go out, as he had, into the world, and make their fortune. ... Whatever the mixture of motives, after 1858 he promoted their early departure, even when it pained him to see them leave." (12.1) It is not unusual that self-made men take the attitude that 'if I can make it, everyone can' without realising that their success is due to the fact that they are highly unusual (or very lucky). It is a paradox that an author who championed the weak and the poor never recognised this fact about himself.
Much of what I already knew about Dickens (his father was a financial disaster, he was traumatised by being taken from school and sent to work in a factory with lower class children, he was an instantly successful novelist, he worked hard and wrote copiously, he loved amateur theatricals, he rejected his wife of twenty years and ten children in favour of a young actress) is repeated in this biography. It is all part of the myth. It must be difficult to write a Life of Dickens without repeating the same old stuff.
What surprised me was the emphasis on the spare-time activities of the novelist. Kaplan gives us chapter and verse of his holidays, his friendships, his business arrangements, his amateur theatricals etc. There is much less about the activity that dominated his life: his writing.
The book is far more interested in the later works. For example, there is no plot summary of Nickleby or Chuzzelwit but more than three pages are devoted to the plot of Great Expectations. Not only is this manifestly unfair, but I would argue that the first two books are far less well known that the last, so Kaplan seems to be telling the reader what the reader already knows.
I suppose that Kaplan's biographer's instinct seeks to uncover the links between reality and fiction. For the later books, say from Bleak House onwards, Kaplan explains where the theme comes from (eg Hard Times which is about the conditions of the industrial revolution is inspired by a strike in Preston) and the model for many of the characters (Leigh Hunt for Horace Skimpole in Bleak House) but it would appear that the earlier books (Pickwick, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby) were spontaneously generated.
What interests me, as an author, is how Dickens honed his craft. Kaplan tells us: "In the novels that were to follow [David Copperfield] ... he was to use autobiographical tonalities for more subjective portraiture and psychological dramatization than in his earlier work." (7.3) He also reveals that , in the run up to writing Little Dorrit, "Dickens had begun to jot down ideas for stories and character sketches and lists of titles and names for characters in a small notebook ... He had never before kept a working notebook." (10.2) But, again, these considersations are dwarfed by discussion of Dickens travelling in Paris.
As for specifically technique-based discussion, all I could find was that Kaplan talks about the use of dual narrators (omniscient and first person) in Bleak House (but doesn't tell us how or why Dickens chose that difficult technique) and that "Collins' major objection to Dickens' fiction ... was that he did not tell his audience enough. For Collins, the art of fiction demanded a series of self-conscious signposts directing the reader toward an unraveling of a well-constructed plot. For Dickens, plot revelations needed to rise organically from the interaction of characters in a narrative pattern in which suggestion and symbol appealed to the reader's intuition." (12.3).
Perhaps I was hoping for too much. Perhaps biography can't deliver a connection between an author's life and the development of his craft; perhaps this link is too subtle to leave traces. But there were moments in this biography when I wondered whether writing was part of what Dickens did.
As for the person, he certainly emerges as a rather unpleasant man. His vindictiveness when he ditched his wife was horrid: he ditched his long-standing publishers, his partners in a magazine, to their great cost, when they refused to print a self-serving statement about his marriage in Punch, the humorous magazine, which they owned, on the grounds that it wasn't humour. He was determined to squash the rumours that he was separating from his faithful wife to have an affair with a much younger woman because he was fearful that allegations of impropriety would damage the Dickens 'family values' brand. He demanded his children (except for his eldest son) stayed with him and never saw their mother. His daughter, Kate, is reported in this biography as saying: "My father was like a madman when my mother left home ... The affair brought out all that was worst - all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us." (11.3)
He was hugely money-motivated. He took on far more work than a normal person could cope with because he was desperate for money. He couldn't resist the lure of reading tours, although he was advised against them as they made him very ill and perhaps shortened his life, because of the huge incomes they generated even when he was already hugely rich. I suppose he was haunted by the memories of his debt-ridden childhood.
He was ashamed of his sons. "Having been born to neither wealth nor title, his sons, Dickens assumed, should go out, as he had, into the world, and make their fortune. ... Whatever the mixture of motives, after 1858 he promoted their early departure, even when it pained him to see them leave." (12.1) It is not unusual that self-made men take the attitude that 'if I can make it, everyone can' without realising that their success is due to the fact that they are highly unusual (or very lucky). It is a paradox that an author who championed the weak and the poor never recognised this fact about himself.
February 20, 2020
Since I've been reading (and rereading) a lot of Dickens the past few months, I decided to find out a little more about the man, hence this biography.
I wasn't crazy about the style of this biography. Kaplan seems determined to use every notecard he generated in his research, and I learned (and have now forgotten) more about many of Dickens' friends and contemporaries than I wanted to know. In addition, he uses quotations by the thousand without any indication in the text of whom he is quoting. (You can track it down via the endnotes – at least I assume you can. But who wants to do that?) As a result, it's often not clear whether he's giving Dickens' view of some matter or the view of some other person involved in it.
I already knew a reasonable amount about Dickens, but I did learn some new things:
1. The youthful radical became more conservative as he aged, not that that is unusual for anyone.
2. I had long known about Ellen Ternan, but I had assumed (I don't know why) that Dickens kept that relationship a secret not just from his reading public, but from many friends as well. But it seems the relationship was fully known within Dickens' wide circle. (By the way, Kaplan says that there were rumors of a child by Ellen – another thing I hadn't known.)
3. In the same vein, while I knew that Dickens had a miserable marriage, I hadn't realized that he and his wife lived completely separate lives for most of their marriage. Upon their separation, Dickens "kept" all but the oldest of their ten children, which I suppose must have been the husband's prerogative in the Victorian era. (By his directive the oldest child, Charley, lived with his mother.)
4. Most of his children's lives turned out to be disappointing; there were lots of bad marriages, bankruptcies, emigrations to India and Australia. Dickens seems to have viewed all that as genetic, although that's not the word he would have used – a manifestation of his own parents' fecklessness. I wonder if maybe it's simply hard to develop a work ethic when you see your father become wealthy "merely" by sitting at a desk for a few hours every morning.
5. I have been pronouncing "Boz" wrong (at least in my head) all my life. But I suspect this is a mistake even Dickens' contemporary readers made, since print was the only mass medium.
I wasn't crazy about the style of this biography. Kaplan seems determined to use every notecard he generated in his research, and I learned (and have now forgotten) more about many of Dickens' friends and contemporaries than I wanted to know. In addition, he uses quotations by the thousand without any indication in the text of whom he is quoting. (You can track it down via the endnotes – at least I assume you can. But who wants to do that?) As a result, it's often not clear whether he's giving Dickens' view of some matter or the view of some other person involved in it.
I already knew a reasonable amount about Dickens, but I did learn some new things:
1. The youthful radical became more conservative as he aged, not that that is unusual for anyone.
2. I had long known about Ellen Ternan, but I had assumed (I don't know why) that Dickens kept that relationship a secret not just from his reading public, but from many friends as well. But it seems the relationship was fully known within Dickens' wide circle. (By the way, Kaplan says that there were rumors of a child by Ellen – another thing I hadn't known.)
3. In the same vein, while I knew that Dickens had a miserable marriage, I hadn't realized that he and his wife lived completely separate lives for most of their marriage. Upon their separation, Dickens "kept" all but the oldest of their ten children, which I suppose must have been the husband's prerogative in the Victorian era. (By his directive the oldest child, Charley, lived with his mother.)
4. Most of his children's lives turned out to be disappointing; there were lots of bad marriages, bankruptcies, emigrations to India and Australia. Dickens seems to have viewed all that as genetic, although that's not the word he would have used – a manifestation of his own parents' fecklessness. I wonder if maybe it's simply hard to develop a work ethic when you see your father become wealthy "merely" by sitting at a desk for a few hours every morning.
5. I have been pronouncing "Boz" wrong (at least in my head) all my life. But I suspect this is a mistake even Dickens' contemporary readers made, since print was the only mass medium.
July 14, 2019
In all the years I have been reading/re-reading Dickens novels, I’ve never read a biography of him. Sure I read some things on the Internet, but really not much substance. In fact, I never looked at the chronology of his publishing. In reading Kaplan’s book, I discovered so many details about his life, his books and some insights into his motivations and inspirations while writing some of the more notable novels.
That’s not to say that the book is all positive. The book is a bit dense and slow at times with too much granularity on some periods of his life, while I would have liked Kaplan to expand more on the impact of the train crash on Dickens, though it seemed like most of that information would come from his son or others since Dickens didn’t speak or write much about it.
As a biography, it is not especially well done, though the most recent biographies I’ve read were written by David McCullough whose style is more my taste.
As a fan of Charles Dickens, I am very glad I invested the time to read Kaplan’s book as I did learn much about Dickens and have a greater appreciation of his work. I have decided that I should go back and re-read Dicken’s novels in chronological order. This certainly will give me more perspective on how he evolved as a writer and storyteller.
If you are a fan of Dickens and have not read a biography on him, I would recommend reading this book, but be prepared for some padding in the writing.
That’s not to say that the book is all positive. The book is a bit dense and slow at times with too much granularity on some periods of his life, while I would have liked Kaplan to expand more on the impact of the train crash on Dickens, though it seemed like most of that information would come from his son or others since Dickens didn’t speak or write much about it.
As a biography, it is not especially well done, though the most recent biographies I’ve read were written by David McCullough whose style is more my taste.
As a fan of Charles Dickens, I am very glad I invested the time to read Kaplan’s book as I did learn much about Dickens and have a greater appreciation of his work. I have decided that I should go back and re-read Dicken’s novels in chronological order. This certainly will give me more perspective on how he evolved as a writer and storyteller.
If you are a fan of Dickens and have not read a biography on him, I would recommend reading this book, but be prepared for some padding in the writing.
December 9, 2025
Very good book!
August 31, 2013
Vivid, mostly satisfying portrait of Dicken's personal, literary, social and public lives. Before his death, Dickens destroyed the bulk of letters written and rec'd, thus obliterating primary source material, particularly with respect to his sustained relationship with mistress Ellen Ternan. Fairly certain more recent biographies would satisfy questions raised by the reading of Kaplan's work.
January 10, 2010
I'm undertaking the works of Dickens in order, some will be re-reads but some will be new...and I'm so looking forward to understand who Dickens was and where his characters came from.
May 4, 2014
This is so wonderfully insightful and a look into Dickens' life, however... Fred Kaplin... do you... by any chance... do you want to be Charles Dickens? It's okay, you can admit it out loud.
May 2, 2017
Fred Kaplan, author of "Thomas Carlyle: A Biography," presents a compelling, meticulously researched biography of Charles Dickens, arguably the most celebrated writer of the 19th Century, who turned out so many literary masterpieces, including Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist.
Far from being a hagiography—in “Dickens: A Biography,” readers are greeted with the good, bad, and ugly of this prominent English writer and social critic; both the brilliant novelist along with his private peccadillos, especially with women, and his dalliances with Ellen Ternan.
Far from being a hagiography—in “Dickens: A Biography,” readers are greeted with the good, bad, and ugly of this prominent English writer and social critic; both the brilliant novelist along with his private peccadillos, especially with women, and his dalliances with Ellen Ternan.
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