Charles Dickens

by Michael Slater

This long-awaited biography, twenty years after the last major account, uncovers Dickens the man through the profession in which he excelled. Drawing on a lifetime’s study of this prodigiously brilliant figure, Michael Slater explores the personal and emotional life, the high-profile public activities, the relentless travel, the charitable works, the amateur theatricals and the astonishing productivity. But the core focus is Dickens’ career as a writer and professional author, covering not only his big novels but also his phenomenal output of other writing--letters, journalism, shorter fiction, plays, verses, essays, writings for children, travel books, speeches, and scripts for his public readings, and the relationships among them. Slater’s account, rooted in deep research but written with affection, clarity, and economy, illuminates the context of each of the great novels while locating the life of the author within the imagination that created them. It highlights Dickens’ boundless energy, his passion for order and fascination with disorder, his organizational genius, his deep concern for the poor and outrage at indifference towards them, his susceptibility towards young women, his love of Christmas and fairy tales, and his hatred of tyranny. Richly and precisely illustrated with many rare images, this masterly work on the complete Dickens, man and writer, becomes the indispensable guide and companion to one of the greatest novelists in the language.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Victorian, British Literature, Biography Memoir, Classics

696 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, past President of the International Dickens Fellowship and of the Dickens Society of America, and former editor of the journal The Dickensian. He has taught and continues to lecture widely in the USA, across Europe, Australasia and the Far East.

Read an article by Michael Slater at Yale's London Blog: Charles Dickens: An Attempt on his Life

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exhaustive but compulsively readable bio is a super-rollercoaster-speedy gallop through Dickens, done in a linear styleé. The revelations? Dickens was as superhumanly prodigious as publicly known: quilling novels and articles pretty much non-stop for the first twenty years of his professional life, taking breaks to act and perform and hang out in Switzerland, composing voluminous correspondence in the interstices. He was as radical and committed to liberal Victorian ideals as publicly known, if more armchair-bound in his activism than hands-on hanging with the peasants (slums and swamps made him squeamish). His affection for his reading public worked in comfortable tandem with his business acumen to keep his many dependents in the cosy bourgeois lives they had to maintain, or else. At no point did he cynically milk his audience to earn extra shillings, even if maximum profit was his pursuit. Hang on—did I promise revelations? Dickens was pretty bitter to his enemies, and touchy about touchy topics like his childhood in the blacking factory and the whole Nelly Tiernan fiasco. Notably, he split from early publishers for a refusal to print a stroppy “personal note” in Household Words. The only occasion where Chaz is a cast-iron bastard is in his treatment of his wife Catherine who, after bearing ten of his kids, is turned away by a Nelly-besotted Dickens and is poisoned against her kids and pretty much bricked up in the attic (not literally). Dickens as a benevolent paterfamilias is pretty inaccurate: most of his kids were lost and unhappy under his dadship in the end, despite the money. But it was never clear whether he consummated his affair with Nelly, so there. One thing this book avoids entirely is Dickens’s religious life: a strange omission seeing how saturated with Godliness his works are. A pretty comprehensive and pleasurable bio on the whole, thanks.

[Karen· · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So, Mr Dickens, what did you think of Mr Slater's biography?"

"It was always my desire that my fame should for ever rest solely on my work, on the achievements of my writing life, and it must be admitted that Mr Slater displays a most fitting and seemly respect for my towering body of work. His research is meticulous, I could not possibly fault him, either on his knowledge of all my writings, or on his detailed catalogue of the circumstances under which each and every essay, article and novel was produced. His praise for my literature is fulsome and judicious, his admiration for my industry and energy no less laudatory than it should be, and his assessment of my contribution to the welfare of my fellow writers is well-placed and felicitous. He is also gratifyingly appreciative of my acting skills."

"Do I detect a 'but'?"

"Surely you can hardly expect my wholehearted endorsement of his portrayal of my dealings with publishers and particularly with that uncongenial woman to whom I was so incompatibly tied for so many years? He makes me appear at best disingenuous, at worst duplicitous in my arrangements with Macrone, for example!"

"Aye, but then you did sell Sketches by Boz to Banks for his Carlton Chronicle although Macrone was preparing a second series, and undersigned a formidable contract with Bentley in which you promised to engage in no other literary production until the first of two three-volume novels was written for him, even though you had agreed to publish your first novel with Macrone."

"Macrone was a penny-pinching cheapskate who had no inkling of the literary market and my position within it. Clearly any verbal arrangement with him would become null and void when positions shifted so swiftly. But Mr Slater regularly implies, nay, baldly states that I would often re-write my own past in order to appear more virtuous, not only with regard to business dealings, but also in my treatment of Mrs Dickens. Yet he cannot possibly base his opinion on any evidence. At least he has the grace to examine the chronology of my meeting the Ternans and thus to realise that my meeting Miss Ellen Ternan was significantly later than the breakdown of my relationship with the woman I was married to. The fact remains that she was a poor mother to our ten children, and a less than satisfactory companion to me; a man cannot be expected to live like that forever."

"Don't you think that you were a little harsh in your treatment of Catherine after your separation?"

"Do you call an annual payment of 600 pounds harsh?"

"Hmmm. How do you react to the psychological interpretation that Slater puts on some of your work? I mean his speculation about how the incident of the blacking factory would inform your work?"

"To be honest, I'm grateful to Mr Slater for his reticence there. He is sensitively cautious in that spurious kind of cod-psychology that equates fiction with autobiography. Naturally my experiences in life inform and influence my work. But my own life, my walks through London, my observation of those ground down by poverty and destitution, my encounters with all stripes and walks of life, they act only as inspiration. It is the movement of my mind that creates the story. And there I am a master. Who else was ever so loved by his reading public? Who else from that time is still so loved? Bulwer-Lytton? Charles Reade? No, my work has endured. That is testimony to my worth. I have vanquished them all."

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-written, enjoyable look at Dickens' life. He was a very energetic and kind man. His work with charities and raising funds for families in hard times was ever-ongoing. He juggled multiple book projects, theatre productions, readings at once. It's surprising that he had any personal time left.
This book is focussed mainly on Dickens' professional/writing life. His personal/family life is tucked in between his projects and writings.
All in all, an interesting man with some mystery left behind. It would have been incredible to spend an evening with him to see what he's really like. My impression is of a kind, intelligent, scarred, energetic, opinionated fireball of a man. He kept secrets.....wonder what they were......

[Kathy Kattenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I’ve read many of Charles Dickens’s books, I knew very little of him beyond that, before now. I chose Michael Slater’s 2009 biography because of the glowing reviews (“eagerly awaited,” “authoritative,” etc.). and having read it, I can say with conviction that the reviews are deserved. Slater is one of the foremost, if not the foremost, experts on Dickens and, according to one of the blurbs on the back cover, he is “the first biographer to have had unhampered access to the whole range of Dickens primary material, in its final edited form.” He is also a first-class writer; this book is a page-turner, filled with the kind of rich detail that only comes from years of study and meticulous research.

It needs a biographer of this standing to do justice to a literary figure such as Charles Dickens -- an immensely creative, imaginative, multitalented writer who emotionally and psychologically was a very complex, complicated man. He had a gift for friendship to match his gift for writing, and as a result was surrounded throughout his life by dear and close friends who treasured and cherished him as much as he did them. He was capable of enormous kindness and generosity, not just toward his friends but also toward struggling writers who looked to him as a role model. His anger at the way the poor and powerless were treated in Victorian society was burned into him by his own experiences at the age of 12, when his father went to debtor’s prison, and Dickens had to leave school to work in a blacking (shoe polish) factory.

During his lifetime, Dickens was easily England’s most beloved author, and he is still considered so today. But he did have a darker side which remained well hidden from his adoring public. When, in his mid-40s, he fell in love with an 18-year-old actress and decided his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, which had been unhappy for some years, was no longer tolerable, he banished his wife from their home (divorce, although legal, was too scandalous an option in upper-class Victorian society for Dickens to seriously consider). It’s unclear from what Slater tells us (and perhaps from what is known) whether he allowed their children the choice of staying with him, or going with her, but in any event they stayed with him. Given that Catherine had borne 10 children in her almost 20-year marriage to Dickens (one died in infancy, so there were nine living), and given what we know about the options a woman had in Victorian society for an independent life that could support nine children, it’s difficult to see how she could have taken the children with her regardless of what her own wishes might have been. After Dickens sent her into exile, Catherine never saw or spoke to her husband again, and Slater does not tell us how much she saw any of her children after that, or even whether she saw them at all. Slater does make it clear that there are very few confirmable answers to these questions that can be gleaned from what is known in the public record, so perhaps they must remain unanswerable.

What IS known -- and what Slater makes abundantly clear -- is that, in the 12 years between 1858 (when these events occurred) and 1870, when he died, Dickens’s behavior toward Catherine was often shockingly cruel, inflicting more pain than would have been inherent in the situation itself. As adults, many of his and Catherine’s children led dysfunctional lives, getting into one mess after another in their personal and in their work lives (the sons, that is, and they were all sons except for two), and Dickens attributed the reason to Catherine having been a bad mother. Worst, though, he actually said this to many of his friends over the years, lamenting to them his misfortune in having been yoked to a woman whose maternal abilities were so inadequate as to produce such children. (And yes, Slater does note that Dickens never appeared to consider the obvious response to this complaint.)

Equally hurtful was Dickens’s revision of his personal history to exclude Catherine -- as when he responded to a letter from Catherine (graciously) wishing him bon voyage on his 1867 readings tour to America with a stiff and formal letter in which he mentioned the American tour they had made together in 1842, but wrote her out of it, as in “You will recall when I made my first trip to America,” as if she had never been on that trip with him at all -- even though at the time he wrote to friends back home of what a lively and cheerful companion she was.

It’s hard to understand what need or deficit in Dickens’s nature drove him to such gratuitous cruelty toward the woman who was his wife for two decades and the mother of 10 children they created together. But that’s part of what made him so complex and fascinating. The dark and the light together are what made Dickens, Dickens -- and Michael Slater does a truly admirable job of opening Dickens to us in the full roundness of the man and the author.

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an examination of the life of Charles Dickens mainly based from the books and the multitude of articles he wrote. As the author points out Dickens’s life was writing. His written output was enormous – he wrote novels, he was a magazine editor and wrote numerous essays for other journals and newspapers. He often juggled all these activities simultaneously – sometimes meeting the deadlines, at other times extending the deadlines. In addition he was a charismatic public speaker and loved to recite his works (which he would re-edit to fit into the framework of his public performance). One needs also to understand that words for Dickens were a means to trigger active social change – his writings reflect the poor and the homeless – their living conditions were abominable. He constantly advocated the intervention of government in public hygiene and public education. He set up a centre for homeless women.

Dickens avidly explored his world – he knew the streets – the sights and sounds of London. He would often take walks of ten to fifteen miles – an enormous distance on foot. Unlike some writers today who seem sequestered in an inner world – Dickens went to the outer world to get his stories – in the teeming streets of London. Additionally the author shows us very well the creative method in action as we can feel the generative process at work in the stories of Dickens – the moulding of his characters and scenes is aptly demonstrated.

He was an ebullient personality and enjoyed being with people – he could be the centre of attention wherever he was. He was extremely popular during his lifetime and wanted to feel the love of his reading public. He connected emotionally with them through his public readings. When his books were released – by two to three chapters at a time – they were awaited upon enthusiastically by his audience; in very much the same way that people today await the next episode of a favourite TV show or concert performance. Dickens was the superstar of his era.

I learnt much of Dickens from this book, but there are some things that seem to be missing.

When his marriage dissolved (after having innumerable children – I lost count) his wife’s sister, Georgina, continued to live in the Dickens household and looked after his children. This does appear rather odd, but the author offers no explanation. Dickens had a very clandestine affair with a young actress – but due to the “Victorian” nature of the times there are only coded references to the true nature of the relationship – the author speculates that she may have had a child from Dickens, but leaves it at that.

The author points out one episode in which Dickens was shocked by a painting of Millais – “Christ in the House of His Parents” and wrote disparagingly of it. By today’s standards this painting is very innocuous. In later years Dickens and Millais became more amiable with each other (according to the art book I referenced).

The author also speaks admirably of all of Dickens works – I feel this should have been toned down or been more evaluative. He makes Dickens novels too equal in their intensity. What is also absent is a retrospective analysis of the works of Dickens through the ages. Why is it that most of us have heard (or even read) “David Copperfield” or a “Tale of Two Cities”, but novels like “Barnaby Rudge” or “Bleak House” are much more obscure. I do find some of Dickens characters somewhat of a caricature and the woman tend to be overly angelic.

I also find this book giving substantial details of Dickens weekly activities – people encountered, articles written… this makes for lengthy reading, plus the print size in my hardcover edition is small.

Nevertheless I am prompted to re-read some of the Dickens I already have and to venture into the ones I have not. The author amply demonstrates, Dickens (aside from Shakespeare) is the supreme author in the Anglo-Saxon world. His stories resonate through the ages.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in 2016, on a road trip to Digha—with my wife and mother for company, and Dickens riding shotgun.

There are biographies, and then there are living, breathing re-creations of a soul. Michael Slater’s Charles Dickens belongs to the latter kind. I read it during a road trip to Digha in 2016—an unlikely setting for Victorian deep-diving, but perhaps that made it all the more memorable. As the sea murmured in the background and my family snoozed beside me, Dickens’s whirlwind life—his stage performances, broken loves, reformist zeal, and grinding ambition—leapt off the pages.

Slater doesn’t just chronicle the life of the novelist; he captures the heartbeat of a restless genius. I remember being struck by Dickens’s duality: the fierce compassion and the cold ambition, the glittering public persona and the haunted private man. It was like peeking behind the velvet curtain of a very crowded theatre—where laughter, sorrow, and ego danced in equal measure.

It remains one of the most emotionally intelligent portraits of Dickens I’ve encountered. And yes, even the sea breeze in Digha seemed to whisper, “Barkis is willin’.”

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Slater is one of the foremost Dickens scholars in the world, and in his biography of Charles Dickens he brings his great knowledge to the reader. To write a biography of Dickens must be an ever-increasingly difficult task. There are numerous biographies already available, and the presence and the proliferation of new journals focusing on the Victorian period must make the field somewhat cramped. However, with a judicious use of primary source material and the insights and connections gained from a lifetime of Dickens study, we get in this book a workable, insightful, and informative study of Charles Dickens.

I did not find that Slater wanted to create much new, controversial, or compelling insights. Rather, this biography gives you an extremely reasoned and informative look at Dickens from, quite literally the cradle to the grave.

With this biography there is a measured focus on the various stages of Dickens’s life, and Slater does not shy aware from being somewhat critical of Dickens at various stages of his life. Still, this book contains far more praise than criticism, and much more solid insight than unscholarly speculation.

This is a book for all of us who enjoy Dickens as either an author or as a measured obsession. I count myself in the second category.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a biography which focuses on Dickens as a writer, looking at how the various works he was writing at any one time intersect and influence one another. Early in his career he was often writing two novels at once in partworks, as well as a lot of journalism, and it is very interesting to see how all these worked together. Slater is an expert and really knows his stuff. I especially appreciate the focus on Dickens' journalism and his short stories, as well as the public speaking and readings. As I'm a Dickens obsessive who's read all 12 volumes of his letters (!), I knew a lot of what is in the book already, but it is nice to have it all brought together and of course there is a lot more I didn't know or hadn't remembered. There isn't so much focus on his personal relationships as in other biographies, so I would say this is probably a biography to read second, after Peter Ackroyd or Edgar Johnson.

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An indispensible biography of Charles Dickens. Aptly subtitled, "A Life Defined By Writing" -- this biography focuses on Dickens' writing, not just his novels but also his short stories, journalism and editing. The process of writing just about every number of every novel is detailed (the major ones were released in 19 monthly installments -- with the final one being a double issues), often down to where Dickens was living, who was visiting him, and what time pressures he was under. In contrast, the death of Dickens' sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, which might get a chapter in a more psychological or personal treatment of Dickens, initially gets just a single paragraph that a less-than-fully alert reader might miss. But then Slater returns to Hogarth's death multiple times as Dickens writes it into books from the Old Curiousity Shop to David Copperfield. Although Dickens' relationship with Ellen Ternen gets more space, Slater refuses to delve or speculate -- and again seems mostly interested in Ternan as a model for some of the women in Dickens' later novels as well as in the geographic pull she exerts on him.

The process by which novels and other writings were composed would not be of interest for most writers. But for Dickens, it is integral. Whether he was sending back letters from America to support his trip there or resuscitating his latest periodical by contributing a novel, the process was an important part of the end result. Great Expectations, for example, would have been a different had Dickens written it in monthly installments as originally planned rather than the weekly numbers he ultimately utilized to help promote his publication All the Year Round.

Slater is an excellent writer and an authority on Dickens who lets his subject speak for himself through extensive excerpts. Although I would not recommend this for casual or light reading (Peter Ackroyd's Dickens would be a better choice for that -- notwithstanding it's 1,000+ page length), there isn't a better book for those who are interested.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a number of new biographies out in honor of the bicentennial of Dickens' birth, but this one came out in 2009. I'm just now getting around to it. I liked it much better than Ackroyd's weird novelistic imagining of Dickens' inner life. As a quondam Dickens scholar and author of a book on Dickens myself, I'm fussy, but this is a fine biography. The only issue is that there really isn't anything new to report about Dickens. We know what we're going to know about his emotional response to youthful misfortune and his secret life in his last 15 years with his mistress Nelly Ternan. Dickens himself was endowed with the most prodigious imagination in human history, and he re-shaped his past experience to fit the story line rather than the facts. As a result, we have 15 wonderful novels, the timeless Christmas stories, and something like 3,000 pages of journalism, speeches, occasional pieces, parodies, sketches, memorabilia, broadsides, political sallies, and on and on and on. It's imbued with a quintessential sense of the Victorian era and Dickens own incredible inner life. To enter Dickens world is to enter simultaneously the Victorian past and the unique workings of an extraordinary mind.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really can't say enough good things about this biography. It is an exhaustively and thoroughly researched portrait of a man's life and his defining work, and the final chapters build wonderfully to Dickens' final days and the enormity of his legacy. I appreciate the hundreds of references to the Dickens' letters that have found their way into archives and museums. They are fascinating, and show that the writer in Dickens was never "turned off."

At times the prose is clunky and in need of a good editor (I'm looking at you, Michael Slater). And there are parts in this 625-page beast that maybe drag unnecessarily. But my 5-star review is based in great part not just on the book itself, but on my experience reading it. I couldn't love Dickens more, and I couldn't ever have enough information about him. If you find yourself in this same boat, Slater's excellent biography is the book for you.

[Andrew Pratley · Rating 5 out of 5]

First rate account of Charles Dickens' life. Dickens was a complex man. A genius for sure but not without faults. There is no doubt though that his virtues outweighed his failings. This book evokes the period & the man giving the reader much food for thought & a great appreciation of the scale of the great man's achievement. The pace never lets up from first to last.

[Melissa Caissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough mix of literary criticism, biography, and commentary—an homage and exposition of an extraordinary writer and man that would, I imagine, have made Dickens himself smile even while reading an even, fair, and deeply-detailed analysis.

[Bill Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles Dickens (CD) is acknowledged as England’s greatest Victorian novelist. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his view of society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him one of the great forces in 19th-century literature. If it is CD you seek, he is to be found in Slater’s mammoth work. Michael Slater is an Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature. A past President of both the International Dickens fellowship and the Dickens Society of America. He was the Editor of the Dickens Fellowship’s journal, The Dickensian. He has written several publications on and around Dickens, yet, I believe this work is his Magnum Opus because it is a total Immersion into Charles Dickens (CD).
Dicken’s early years and during the first six years of his life the family moved six times from a Naval base to London, all of these moves had an impact on his writing. Slater describes CD’s relationship with his father and mother and emphasizes how these formulative relationships influenced the later writer. CD was identified early on as a gifted child with inquisitiveness and a love of singing, dance, acting and books. His father coached and encouraged him in all these endeavors and his mother provided the early education. There were three stages of CD’s young development; first, the happy times living in Chatham surrounded by a supportive family, Second, as family fortunes diminished he was no longer schooled and forced by his father’s financial circumstances to work in a blacking factory, this was a humiliation that he carried the rest of his life; third, escape from this child labor after about 14 months and a return to formal education where his teachers noted and supported his unusual intellect. All three experiences had a great influence, through out these years his passion for reading encouraged by his mother sustained him, and he escaped into classic authors and the fantasy of the Arabian Nights. The other important aspect of his early development was his fascination with the City of London. CD in his youth would go astray in the backstreets of London, alone wondering for hours day and night. CD had amazing powers of observation and what he saw of the poverty and social decay in that City was depicted in many of his future works. These experiences made him into a social activist and while his activism permeated his writing, he also raged in editorials and pamphlets against the Governments lack of interest in the poor and homeless of London, he once stated, “The State is criminally neglectful or brutally repressive parent of its poorest children”.
CD wrote his biography into many of the stories and characters he created. His favorite character - David Copperfield. David Copperfield is a carefully structured and unified novel. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a rather bleak painting of the conditions of childhood in Victorian England, notoriously when the troublesome children are parked in infamous boarding schools, then he strives to trace the slow social and intimate ascent of a young man who, painfully providing for the needs of his good aunt while continuing his studies, ends up becoming a writer; the story, writes Paul Davis, of "a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding". This work has been called CD’s masterpiece, "the triumph of the art of Dickens", which marks a turning point in his work, the point of separation between the novels of youth and those of maturity. Though written in the first person, David Copperfield is more than an autobiography, going beyond this framework in the richness of its themes and the originality of its writing, which makes it a true autobiographical novel. In the words of the author, this novel was "a very complicated weaving of truth and invention". It was Dickens' favorite among his own novels. In the preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens wrote, "like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield."
This reviewer’s interest in Dickens was peaked while reading a story by Mark Twain. Twain mentions Dickens’ in writing of his experiences on the Mississippi, so I sought Dickens out, through the eyes of Michael Slater. Slater fully details the first American trip and the reaction on both sides of the Atlantic, mostly negative on the western side by CD’s own doing. Dickens did not like all the glad handing he received in America, he came to perform research in order to write about his experience. He found the trip tedious. CD is quoted, “This is not the Republic I came to see, this is not the Republic of my imagination” this sums up his negative feelings. Two things marred CD’s American trip. The first was his insistence on addressing what he considered the American failure to comply with International copywrite laws and the issue of slavery which he was also outspoken about and these two issues did not endear him to his American audiences. Dickens’ wrote letters home describing the people encountered in his travels and some descriptions are quite humorous; Like being cramped on a small canal boat with roughens chewing and spitting tobacco every where
During this American trip, Edgar Alan Poe, the great American writer met Dickens in Philadelphia. It was sort of a unique moment in literature when these two great writers met. Both shared an admiration for each other’s work, yet, most interesting was Poe’s fascination with CD’s pet raven, “Grip”. So much so that Poe’s later master piece poem” The Raven” is undeniably the result of Poe’s interactions with CD and his descriptions of Grip. It was almost a collaboration without them realizing it. For instance, there is clear evidence of passages in Dickens novel “Barnaby Rudge’ that sound very much like Poe: “At the end of the fifth chapter," for example, "Grip makes a noise and someone asks, ‘What was that—him tapping at the door?’ Another character responds, ‘’Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter.’” and there are even more similarities. Where we often find surprising lineages of influence from author to author, it’s unusual that the connections are so direct, so personal, and so odd, as those between Poe, Dickens, and Grip, the talking raven. Another striking irony in their meeting: Poe courted Dickens in 1842 to impress the novelist, with his worth and versatility as a critic, poet, and writer of tales, and with the aim of establishing a literary reputation, and possible securing publishing contracts in England which never developed, yet, we got The raven out of their meeting. Slater did not do this meeting justice in this biography.
During the American trip CD also met and befriended Washington Irving, another influential writer. Irving had a huge influence on CD, who is quoted as having once said, “I do not go to bed two nights out of seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs to bed with me". Irving could be labelled as an anglophile and his writings about the English country customs and Christmas lore were captured by CD in the writing of the Christmas Carol, his most famous and beloved story. Again, Slater did not do this meeting justice.
CD made visits of inspection to prisons, hospitals and asylums; he especially found the prison in Philadelphia that housed all inmates in solitary confinement as cruel punishment. Most Americans felt that he was on the look out for material for some future book and he like so many other visitors to these shores drew wide national conclusions from isolated exceptional facts – to charge America with the peculiarities of a few individuals met by chance on steamboats and railroad cars was not an accurate assessment, but it sold books. The American tour was a lucrative experience for CD, the British had a great interest in America and anything Dickens’ was quite popular in England.
This reviewer realized early on that he was not prepared to provide this work with the proper reflection and objectivity it deserves. To enjoy Slater’s work, a reader must be more than familiar with CD’s body of work. Slater plows through the formative years, the writing years and the travels referencing characters from CD’s many books and publications, assuming we are familiar with them. This reader lost context and failed to grasp Slater’s point at times by not having a knowledge of the character that he was discussing. CD was a prolific, writer, actor and essayist and his energy always required that he have several projects going at once. Slater is just as prolific, and he felt it necessary to discuss most of CD’s letters, articles, periodicals and novels; this made for a very tedious narrative.
Slater does connect CD with a few noteworthy historical observations, for instance the Crimean War, where CD turned his critical eye on the bureaucracy that mismanaged the war, yet, there were other noteworthy encounters that this reviewer felt Slater failed to expand on the topic. In the first trip to America, as part of his stage performance he mesmerized someone from the audience; While in Rome, he mesmerized quoting Slater a “patient”! a Mme de La Rue and further along in the narrative it is mentioned that he mesmerized his wife, Catherine. Slater mentions these things and just keeps going, what was CD up to? Was he a practicing physician of some sort? In this area, inquiring minds want to know and Slater does not deliver. CD knew and interacted with many important figures in American and Victorian literature. Among them were Poe, Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Longfellow and Harriet Becher Stowe, I wished for more discussion on the interactions between these novelists, like what is previously mentioned about CD and Poe, yet, not mentioned by Slater.
This reviewer’s questions what was Slater purpose in writing this text? He stayed very objective in his narrative and he never criticized CD. His obviously liked him personally because he committed so much of his life’s work to the study of CD, as noted above. CD was a master self-promoter and in his life was managed to project the right public image. His public image was that of a man of the people who was a champion of the down trodden, he was ever vigilant when he thought the government was wrong on social issues, even his novels projected this image. The best example of his managing the sacred image is his abuse of his wife, Catherine. This lady bore him ten children, she loved him, supported him, travelled with him and stood by during all of CD’s philandering. Yet, He decided at one point that he no longer loved her and wanted her out of his life, in order to continue to engage in his womanizing with his sister in law and another woman twenty year his junior. He created a publicity campaign to make Catherine appear to be mentally ill, for the sole purpose of having her committed! He wrote letters to family friends criticizing her to justify why he wanted her out of his house. All of this was done in a campaign to hide his philandering and maintain the right public image, the public image that sold books. This reviewer believes that while Slater did document some of these character flaws, he did not go far enough in judging this very bad behavior of a man that publicly supported the homeless and victimized woman in England.
This biography was interesting at times, yet, very tedious to read. Slaters provides us with an academic study that would be a very good reference book for anyone engaged in an in-depth study of the works of CD, yet, it fails in reporting the true character of this greatest of Victorian novelist.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nov 2, 2011: I am halfway through this biography, and enjoying it greatly, and now it is signed! I went to hear Michael Slater speak this evening at the Morgan Library, and he signed my copy. That wasn't the best part of the evening, though: Slater, in addition to being immensely knowledgeable about Dickens, is an amazingly entertaining speaker. He read excerpts from some of the novels as part of his lecture on Dickens and humor, and he had the audience howling with laughter. He did the voices and just generally had wonderful delivery. I recommend the book (though it is almost as much of a brick as a Dickens novel), but I doubly recommend hearing the author speak.

Nov 11: I finished! Dickens' life makes fascinating reading. I did find, though, that my interest flagged in the discussions of his writings that I haven't read, which makes me think that this biography may not be of interest to people who have read a couple of the novels and are mildly interested in the author's life. I've read all 15 novels (though I don't really remember *Pickwick*), and there was still a ton of writing that I haven't read. It's not hard to understand why so many people who write about Dickens comment on his productivity, and tend to give the impression that his early death came about in part through his relentless work schedule.

Dickens derived great satisfaction (and a fair bit of money) from his public readings. I assume that it is not a coincidence that the number of novels he produced declined as his reading schedule picked up. I know the people of his time relished the chance to watch these performances, which by all accounts were amazing, but I can't help regretting that he didn't reserve his time and energy for more novels.

Slater's biography paints an unapologetic picture of a complex man: an author who wrote idealized portraits of home and hearth, but who both abandoned and vilified his wife; a champion of the poor and down-trodden, an abolitionist, who advocated genocide as a response to rebellion in India. I put down the book wishing I'd had the chance to hear Dickens read "A Christmas Carol," but glad he wasn't my family member or friend. He was a remarkable person, but he was also a product of his era, and in some respects (chauvinism, racism) he failed to rise above the prejudices of his times.

[Malinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so proud of myself for actually finishing this book! This author tells about Dickens' life by walking you through each and every book, short story, newspaper article, etc. that Dickens ever wrote, and it nearly did me in! But I am really glad that I stuck with it because in the end, I felt like I knew Charles Dickens better.

[Davidberlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just got this in the post today. Slater is not only a brilliant Dickens' scholar, he is one of the few who is almost as entertaining as the 'Inimitable' himself.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a Dickens freak you must have this thorough academic look at the man through his works. And vice-versa. Not for the casual Dickens fan.

[Sammi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read a Dickens biography for years and years, and this was not the right one. I ended up liberally skimming it after the first hundred pages or so. Slater spends way, way, way too many words on tiny details like how many pounds and pence Dickens paid or was paid for a certain draft of a certain newspaper article on what day of the week. He spends comparatively little time (!) discussing his inspiration for stories and characters, and the usual stuff you would expect from a biography.

I think Slater might expect you to have already read the classic Dickens biographies, because he references things like Nelly's alleged bastard love child, and I'm like, excuse me what bastard love child?? I guess it's ok to have a supplement to other biographies, but they should really explain that in the beginning.

[East Greenbush Community Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

For dedicated fans of Dickens, this is a real treasure that includes many gems. Dickens' love of lengthy daily walks (10-12 miles was the norm) is well-known. But Slater tells us that October, 1857, an argument, perhaps with his long-suffering wife, Catherine, impelled him to leave his bed in his London home at 2AM to walk 30 miles to his home, Gad's Hill Place, outside Rochester. When did he arrive and what was the state of his footwear?

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough, detailed biography with a focus on Dickens as a writer. The personal part of his life is not neglected, but it is more in the background than in some other biographies, except when it clearly influences his writing. Very reliable and well worth the read!

[Katedurie50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authoritative account of Dickens's writing, comprehensive and magisterial...but for my money, Tomalin gives a stronger sense of his personality and relationships.

[Phyllis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never finished it. I like biographies but found this to be very tedious. It's too bad because he was a fascinating character.

[Jesper Soerensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, the late Michael Slater was the ultimate authority on Dickens. I have enjoyed everything I have read by him, but this is his most comprehensive Dickens biography.

[Lucardus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tolle Biografie von Dickens, die zwar (und ganz ohne geht es sicher gar nicht) auf sein Privatleben eingeht, sich aber weitgehend auf seine schriftstellerische Laufbahn konzentriert. Ich denke, ich werde mir irgendwie die Ackroyd-Biografie besorgen müssen, um mehr vom "Drumherum" zu erfahren. Wobei ich weniger auf den Klatsch bezüglich Ellen ("Nelly") Ternan - die große Liebe, die er bis zu seinem Tod weitgehend geheimhielt, soweit dies im viktorianischen England für einen Mann seiner Bekanntheit möglich war - aus bin, als vielmehr auf die politischen und gesellschaftlichen Umstände seiner Zeit, so wie es Rainer Stach in seiner dreibändigen Kafka-Biografie auf ausgezeichnete Weise hinbekommt. Die Innenpolitik des viktorianischen England gehört nicht zu meinen Steckenpferden, so dass ich Verweise darauf nur getreulich und kontextfrei zur Kenntnis nehmen konnte, der Krimkrieg war dann nicht so ein Enigma, aber spielt auch nur im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes eine entfernte Rolle. Soweit so gut, Slater schafft es, mir den Schriftsteller Dickens als Menschen so nahe zu bringen wie es eine Biografie vermag, ohne in Spekulationen zu verfallen und das auf einem hohen und gut lesbaren (wenn auch manchmal mit Konzentration) Niveau. Ich gebe zu, zuweilen (vor allem nach einer Lesepause) habe ich die ganzen Freunde und Bekannten des Unnachahmlichen nicht mehr so recht zuordnen können, aber bei dieser Vielzahl ist das kein Wunder, man hätte eine Grafik benötigt. Dazu war ich zu faul.

Anders als bei Kafka habe ich bereits einige Werke von Dickens in der Übersetzung von Gustav Meyrink gelesen, allerdings die Pickwicker abgebrochen und Bleak House noch zurückgestellt. Letzteres sollte ich wohl unbedingt nachholen, dann vielleicht mal die noch fehlenden Werke lesen und Simmons - das ist bereits die zweite Rezi, in der ich ihn erwähne - "Drood" erneut goutieren. Übrigens genau das Buch, das mich dazu bewogen hat eine Biografie von Dickens zu lesen.

Sehr empfehlenswerte Lektüre für interessierte Dickens-Leser.

Leider ist mir nichts von einer Übersetzung von Slaters Biografie bekannt. Also ist diese Buch nur für des Englischen mächtige Leser zugänglich und nicht unbedingt für Anfänger, das wäre sicher zu frustrierend.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not entirely successful, but an interesting attempt to write a history of Dickens' writings and Dickens at work. This method both empowers and limits - on the one hand it allows Slater to focus on the process and the glory of someone who thought hard about the process of writing and was superbly good at it. (And incidentally it allows Slater to spend more time on the writings than other biographers do, which allowed me to realize that there was a lot of Dickens I hadn't read - such as the Christmas books and short stories - and some of them are fantastic, such as the second or third Christmas book, about the Tolliver Baby, etc. - others are supernatural, which scare me). The downside is that when Dickens himself sets his mind to obscure or ignore or explain away, he's a dab-hand at it, and Slater feels himself honor bound not to go much farther. So there is a real reticence to speculate too much about the Ternans and the Dickens divorce. Don't get me wrong - it's fully narrated. But there is no overriding sense that Slater can see into Dickens' soul and explain matters - which is, I suppose, a mercy.
Slater is really good at showing the links between Dickens as writer and Dickens as performer (in amateur theatricals of a maniacal elaborateness) and ultimately as performer of his own works out loud. It all makes sense at any moment of the tale - but it is hard to hold all of Dickens' life in mind. Which is again a mercy - it is rather as Dickens must have felt himself to be at any one time in his life.
Finally, I should mention that there is something clotted and subtly awkward about Slater's prose style - not noticable sentence by sentence, but after pages there is an impulse to put it down - and I had to force myself to pick it up again. I can't figure it out - it's not academic, though it is formal - but there is something in how he writes that makes it a relief to stop reading him. But don't let this discourage you!

[Kirk Lowery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dickens' life is astonishing. A 19th century superstar. Immensely popular in his own time, he struggled with all the issues celebrities have. Nevertheless, his incredible energy buoyed him along. Slater, as his biographer, has focused upon Dickens as the writer (naturally), interweaving external events with detailed narration of the actual writing of his many works, connecting the dots between what was happening to Dickens at the time and what happened to his characters he was writing at the same time. Compared to what I'm used to in my field (ancient near east), Dickens' life is fully documented even if there are many unanswered or unanswerable questions.

This is a literary biography, very detailed. The reader comes away with a clear notion of Dickens as a person and as a writer. Recommended.

[Sistermagpie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed biography of a man for whom a single day seems to have contained more details than most people live in a year. Slater covers all sides of Dickens' personality and his many simultaneous careers and it left me truly wondering what it would be like to just hang out with the guy, especially when he deals with the parts of Dickens' life that he kept secret. That is, Nelly Ternan. Or if not secret, just incomprehensible to someone who didn't know him, like his treatment of his wife. He's so hostile to her, and she's so passively accepting of it of him, one has to wonder if that had something to do with what Dickens hated so much!

I feel sadly inadequate to talk about biographies, as the art of them just goes right over my head. I always want it to read more like a novel with a clear throughline, but lives just don't work that way.

[MollyD · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get through this book, had to put it away and come back to it several times, but I'm glad I did. It made me a little sad, Dickens is one of my favorite authors, and I disliked knowing he was unkind to his wife. But I still loved reading about the process he went through with each writing project. The reason it took so long, was I kept putting it aside to read each book as it came up in the biography. Wasn't able to read/re-read all of them, but I did quite a few. I was even able to find a copy of Master Humphrey's Clock, and A Child's History of England, which made me want to read all about King John, etc. He was an amazing author and his energy was astounding. This biography is very detailed, and extremely well written. Great for all Dickens fans, but warning: it will make you want to read everything he wrote. And he wrote a lot!

[Pat]

I am not going to give this book a numerical rating because I abandoned it after 100 pages. The book is scholarly and well-written, but just not what I was looking for. I am not a Dickens scholar and I haven't read his minor works, so the repeated references to those works were lost on me. I have always been intrigued by Dickens, particularly by what brought him to write so movingly and passionately about the destitute and downtrodden in his surroundings, people who were otherwise mistreated or simply ignored by the 'haves' in society. While I did get glimpses of what I was looking for in the sections I read, I simply had to work harder than I wanted to work for those glimpses. What I really needed was a Dickens primer. Instead I got a doctoral dissertation. My fault, not the author's!