Dickens: A Life

by Jeanne MacKenzie, Norman Ian MacKenzie

Enhanced by rare photographs, this biography of the prolific Victorian novelist takes account of the many recently uncovered Dickens letters and the considerable research conducted over the last twenty-five years.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History

446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

MacKenzie, Jeanne (co-author). Oxford University Press, 1979. [These notes were made in 1985. Very satisfying reading. Straightforward and sensible, with a coherent narrative, and an ability for a certain amount of sympathetic involvement, which does not turn into pure speculation or fictional reconstruction. I was struck, even knowing that Dickens drew heavily on his own childhood traumas, at how very closely his life resembled his art. His worship of his wife's younger sister reveals a sentimental idealism which I had thought only a conventional pose when it appeared in, say, the end of David Copperfield. While never unfairly denigrating their subject, the Normans treat his wife Kate with sympathy. Nor do they blind us to the rashness and ill-temper evident in Dickens' first tour of the U.S., or the ever-present egotism and need to stage-manage. Not a hagiography, by any means, but the wealth of detail brought the man closer as a fellow-creature. At the risk of sounding very 18th-century, it's infinitely more interesting than a novel because it's true. Many passages in the biography sent me back to the novels (the Normans do not attempt extended critical analyses), and one chapter set me off on a search for The Frozen Deep, the play in which Dickens had such a major success as principal actor. He must have been a most impressive man.

[V.R. Christensen]

This is a really great biography about the life and times of one of literature's most valuable contributors. This is a superb narrative, rich in detail and scope, and portrays the shaping of a man faced with all the complexities of a quickly changing society. Having been born in 1812, Dickens was caught in the wave of a changing moral code and in the wheels of the Industrial Revolution as it charged full steam ahead. It was a time of confusion and chaos. Amidst all this were the difficulties inherent in living in uncertain financial circumstances. From the lowest of social spheres to the highest, Dickens experienced them all, uniquely qualifying him to write upon any subject, in any setting, and to set it all brilliantly to life with a rare gift of language, description, characterisation and wit. This book captures him completely. A fascinating read; I highly recommend it.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a run-of-the-mill biography about Charles Dickens. I chose it because the current esteemed biography of Dickens is 1000+ pages long and this was the only other option at my library. It gave me the outline of his life, but it didn't flow well. Too much of it was like a list of events and people and the narrative got lost. That combined with the fact that Dickens was not an admirable fellow made it a sometimes trudging read.