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Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion
Charles Dickens's life is a story of rags to riches, complete with bankruptcy, prison, forced child labour, and fame and fortune overshadowed by guilt and secrecy - rather like the plot of one of his novels. Indeed, Dickens drew strongly on his own experiences as the source for much of his fiction. Here the author offers a fresh view of Dickens's remarkable life story.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
4 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,491 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 26, 2021
I finally felt I had read enough of his novels to be able to read a biography of Dickens. However, like his novels, biographies of Dickens tend to be very long, ranging from 500 pages to over a thousand. Those books are full of detailed critiques of his books, not all of which I have read.
I found an abridged one by Peter Ackroyd, who wrote the thousand page plus one. It's a little over 200 pages. It was actually a slow read, packed with information.
The portrait of Dickens is of a very strange person. I don't think he's someone I would have liked. Ackroyd does not try to psychoanalyze him, but we get a picture of a kind of split personality in more ways than one, very high highs and very low lows and also split between a sense of kindness and cruelty.
Apparently, he was very mid-Victorian in being kind of childish and given to bizarre fits of "hilarity" that scared his family. Some of these fits would go on for days before suddenly disappearing, leaving him melancholy and taciturn.
He incorporated a lot of his childhood into his works, but it also haunted him emotionally his whole life. His parents were total deadbeats and his siblings parasites. He disdained them.
He was an incredible workaholic who walked for miles through the streets of London every day. This wasn't for exercise so much as it was to constantly take in all the environs as material for his novels.
When he traveled to the U.S., he was utterly mobbed wherever he went. But when he published his book about that trip, they decided they didn't like him any more. He followed with “Martin Chuzzlewit,” a book that also made Americans look bad. It did not sell as well as some of his other novels, either in England or the U.S.
When he felt he was running out of money, he actually conceived of “A Christmas Carol” as a novella to bring in cash. It worked and remains his most famous story to this day.
Dickens was tireless. Many of his longest novels were still ahead. And if writing those were not enough, he was often engaged in putting on amateur theatricals, that he dragged his friends into, and editing a magazine that was still going when he died.
He longed for his lost youth. Dickens was 45 when he encountered an 18 year old young woman, Ellen Ternan, with whom he was immediately smitten. Dickens scholars agree that he immediately began an affair with her. His wife, Catherine, eventually found out and this led to the separation of Charles and Catherine. Dickens would continue to travel with Ternan and financially support her, including with a legacy he left her after his death. To say that Dickens was self-absorbed is an understatement.
George Orwell in an essay on Dickens rightly depicts Dickens as a Victorian moralist. To whatever degree that Dickens sympathized with the poor, he never favored any kind of reform to improve their lot. He might decry factory or prison conditions or that of schools for orphans, but he never advocated change in any of those institutions that might make a material difference to those who suffered.
==================
I just finished “The Memoirs of Hadrian” and this is my favorite quote. This readily applies to Dickens’ children.
“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”
Beyond their infancy, Dickens did not have much interest in his children. In rather typical fashion for the times, Dickens expected his children to find their own way, as he did when he escaped the bottling factory as a youth and set out on his own with characteristic energy. Sadly, this did not work out so well for his 8 surviving children, but one.
https://observer.com/2012/12/daddy-is...
I found an abridged one by Peter Ackroyd, who wrote the thousand page plus one. It's a little over 200 pages. It was actually a slow read, packed with information.
The portrait of Dickens is of a very strange person. I don't think he's someone I would have liked. Ackroyd does not try to psychoanalyze him, but we get a picture of a kind of split personality in more ways than one, very high highs and very low lows and also split between a sense of kindness and cruelty.
Apparently, he was very mid-Victorian in being kind of childish and given to bizarre fits of "hilarity" that scared his family. Some of these fits would go on for days before suddenly disappearing, leaving him melancholy and taciturn.
He incorporated a lot of his childhood into his works, but it also haunted him emotionally his whole life. His parents were total deadbeats and his siblings parasites. He disdained them.
He was an incredible workaholic who walked for miles through the streets of London every day. This wasn't for exercise so much as it was to constantly take in all the environs as material for his novels.
When he traveled to the U.S., he was utterly mobbed wherever he went. But when he published his book about that trip, they decided they didn't like him any more. He followed with “Martin Chuzzlewit,” a book that also made Americans look bad. It did not sell as well as some of his other novels, either in England or the U.S.
When he felt he was running out of money, he actually conceived of “A Christmas Carol” as a novella to bring in cash. It worked and remains his most famous story to this day.
Dickens was tireless. Many of his longest novels were still ahead. And if writing those were not enough, he was often engaged in putting on amateur theatricals, that he dragged his friends into, and editing a magazine that was still going when he died.
He longed for his lost youth. Dickens was 45 when he encountered an 18 year old young woman, Ellen Ternan, with whom he was immediately smitten. Dickens scholars agree that he immediately began an affair with her. His wife, Catherine, eventually found out and this led to the separation of Charles and Catherine. Dickens would continue to travel with Ternan and financially support her, including with a legacy he left her after his death. To say that Dickens was self-absorbed is an understatement.
George Orwell in an essay on Dickens rightly depicts Dickens as a Victorian moralist. To whatever degree that Dickens sympathized with the poor, he never favored any kind of reform to improve their lot. He might decry factory or prison conditions or that of schools for orphans, but he never advocated change in any of those institutions that might make a material difference to those who suffered.
==================
I just finished “The Memoirs of Hadrian” and this is my favorite quote. This readily applies to Dickens’ children.
“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”
Beyond their infancy, Dickens did not have much interest in his children. In rather typical fashion for the times, Dickens expected his children to find their own way, as he did when he escaped the bottling factory as a youth and set out on his own with characteristic energy. Sadly, this did not work out so well for his 8 surviving children, but one.
https://observer.com/2012/12/daddy-is...
February 27, 2012
If you have this book, it is most likely you received it as the result of desperate last minute Christmas shopping.
And the big box book store had something to do with *that*.
They need 'product', they need a happy display, a riot of colour and promise: cookbooks containing only 7 recipes, but with lots of beautiful food centerfolds. Or photo essays on the Porsche, Diana's last wardrobe, wine bottles recovered from the sea. If it's literary, it will be a monster omnibus thingy – too large to hold, print too small to see.
And of course there's a Starbucks so you can spend 5 dollars on a coffee and discourse about said product:
my fafa! I caught a Janna vajanna
It's totally yanadda Unna fanna, bonna, bonna bah.
I knoow!
It's stupah, I don't have a denana.
A nadda Donna awna tanana ?!*
But not all of these are failures as books. Dickens Public Life and Private Passion comes as close to success as any in this group. It's the companion book to the BBC Dickens special and there are lots of pictures, quite nice really. Yeah it's printed in that tiny typeface with wide set spaces between lines - on shiny paper - very difficult to read. The basic facts of Dickens life are outlined, more complete than Wikipedia but much less than a full biography. It hints at how good the full Ackroyd biography is, so totally get that instead if you can.
* actual conversation overheard by Louis C.K.
And the big box book store had something to do with *that*.
They need 'product', they need a happy display, a riot of colour and promise: cookbooks containing only 7 recipes, but with lots of beautiful food centerfolds. Or photo essays on the Porsche, Diana's last wardrobe, wine bottles recovered from the sea. If it's literary, it will be a monster omnibus thingy – too large to hold, print too small to see.
And of course there's a Starbucks so you can spend 5 dollars on a coffee and discourse about said product:
my fafa! I caught a Janna vajanna
It's totally yanadda Unna fanna, bonna, bonna bah.
I knoow!
It's stupah, I don't have a denana.
A nadda Donna awna tanana ?!*
But not all of these are failures as books. Dickens Public Life and Private Passion comes as close to success as any in this group. It's the companion book to the BBC Dickens special and there are lots of pictures, quite nice really. Yeah it's printed in that tiny typeface with wide set spaces between lines - on shiny paper - very difficult to read. The basic facts of Dickens life are outlined, more complete than Wikipedia but much less than a full biography. It hints at how good the full Ackroyd biography is, so totally get that instead if you can.
* actual conversation overheard by Louis C.K.
December 28, 2024
A brief and beautifully written and illustrated (some of the Nonesuch series art is included) overview of a larger than life author. Ackroyd describes the man's contradictions and remarkable energy particularly well, carefully balancing the private and public sides of a complicated figure. A bit more conversation about the novels would have been welcome, given Ackroyd's astuteness, but that's really another book.
August 6, 2020
Una buena biografía escrita regular. El autor relata cronológicamente los hechos que considera más relevantes de la vida de Dickens sin perder de vista cómo estos se reflejan en sus obras entendidas en el marco de la época, bien dibujada. No hay duda de que Dickens redefinió el imaginario del novelista.
Ahora bien, creo que el autor de este libro se toma en ocasiones ciertas licencias poéticas que le restan seriedad como biógrafo, usando recursos más propios de una novela y llegando a adoptar en ciertos pasajes el estilo del propio Dickens. Tampoco se escapa de hacer algunas interpretaciones sobre el personaje. De todos modos se repite aquí el relato de las vidas de otros genios que marcaron época: el de alguien que, más o menos dotado artísticamente, persevera.
Ahora bien, creo que el autor de este libro se toma en ocasiones ciertas licencias poéticas que le restan seriedad como biógrafo, usando recursos más propios de una novela y llegando a adoptar en ciertos pasajes el estilo del propio Dickens. Tampoco se escapa de hacer algunas interpretaciones sobre el personaje. De todos modos se repite aquí el relato de las vidas de otros genios que marcaron época: el de alguien que, más o menos dotado artísticamente, persevera.
December 28, 2016
What an extremely well-written and insightful biography! Since it is not as exhaustive as Tomalin's biography that I listened to in February, I highly recommend this book as a brief, but exciting introduction to the Inimitable. Replete with pictures and wonderful anecdotes (particularly surrounding his opinions of America and his public readings that almost killed him), Ackroyd's book is thoroughly engaging and immediately interesting. One worn highlighter later, I am so glad I stumbled upon this magnificent book!
March 6, 2019
This concise biography is an expert, beautifully written introduction to the life and character of the mercurial, conflicted and brilliant Dickens.
Upon first seeing Peter Ackroyd's immense bibliography, I suspected he might be a prolific hack biographer, and feared for the $6 I had impulsively spent on this slim volume at a local second-hand store. My concern was greatly misplaced. I shall keep a weather eye out for more of his work.
Upon first seeing Peter Ackroyd's immense bibliography, I suspected he might be a prolific hack biographer, and feared for the $6 I had impulsively spent on this slim volume at a local second-hand store. My concern was greatly misplaced. I shall keep a weather eye out for more of his work.
May 4, 2012
An in-depth study of the life of the real 'David Copperfield'.
Ackroyd is clearly enamored of his subject (aren't we all) and presents an authentic portrait of one of the greatest writers of his and our time. This biography contains gorgeous images of our hero, his friends and family, with a study of his life and times during the writing of each of his books.
A must for all Dickens' fans!
Ackroyd is clearly enamored of his subject (aren't we all) and presents an authentic portrait of one of the greatest writers of his and our time. This biography contains gorgeous images of our hero, his friends and family, with a study of his life and times during the writing of each of his books.
A must for all Dickens' fans!
July 2, 2019
An approachable biography celebrating one of the greatest 19th-century authors.
This biography happens to be published by the same company that produced the Mary Shelley biography I read. I will be seeking out more from this company because I quite like the approach of condensed but detailed writing. For example, if you read the same chapter twice you will notice different details each time. It also has photos of people and places that add depth to the times. Most importantly, the tone is as a pure as possible for a biography (as it should be). It is neither adamantly for nor against the subject, like so many biographies are. Instead, it solely presents the facts and allows you to come to your own conclusions.
I borrowed this edition from the library. My only complaint was the occasional grammatical error or formatting mishap. Otherwise, an enjoyable book.
Verdict: Buy It
This biography happens to be published by the same company that produced the Mary Shelley biography I read. I will be seeking out more from this company because I quite like the approach of condensed but detailed writing. For example, if you read the same chapter twice you will notice different details each time. It also has photos of people and places that add depth to the times. Most importantly, the tone is as a pure as possible for a biography (as it should be). It is neither adamantly for nor against the subject, like so many biographies are. Instead, it solely presents the facts and allows you to come to your own conclusions.
I borrowed this edition from the library. My only complaint was the occasional grammatical error or formatting mishap. Otherwise, an enjoyable book.
Verdict: Buy It
January 30, 2024
Note to self: Stop reading biographies of people you admire unless you want to know all the dispacable things they did and how they treated their families.
Still, it was an even-handed and interesting read.
Still, it was an even-handed and interesting read.
June 8, 2018
Took a long time to read some of it was hard going, but was determined to finish it. I cried at the end when Ackroyd describes his death. Even though I know it was coming.
April 24, 2023
Lots of pictures which I liked.
June 8, 2023
A slim volume, beautifully illustrated.
December 21, 2017
I am obsessed with Dickens, so this book was great.
February 17, 2009
This is a companion book for a PBS series produced by the BBC about one of their favorite sons: Charles Dickens. I did not see the series, so I guess this is the next best thing.
It’s loaded with photos and illustrations that not only cover the life of the famed novelist but also the times in which he lived. It’s also filled with quotes from his many novels.
Dickens himself was as complicated as many of the characters he wrote about in his published works. (According to John R. Greenfield, author of the "Dictionary of British Literary Characters," Dickens actually created 989 named characters during his writing career.) Dust jacket text: “Dickens was a mercurial character, with enormous vitality, wit and humour, yet he also lived a sense of loss and longing that constantly reiterated itself in his work. He died having achieved the success and riches he had aspired to while still harbouring the deep sadness he had experienced all his life.”
As with so many, success did not buy him happiness.
“Hard Times,” a novel published in 1854, highlighting the social and economic unbalance of his era, seems somewhat prophetic today, since of late, our news has been dominated by financial woes and stories about men of greed and the ruin they have wrought. Here’s an excerpt from Ackroyd's book about "Hard Times."
“Yet his larger theme is concerned with the absence of fancy, and of wonder. In a world cajoled by a materialist and financial ethic. ‘Now, what I want is, Facts.’ The words of the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind open the book and, indeed, become an apt epigraph for its story of heartlessness and unimaginative greed." To quote the opening of another famous Dickens' novel, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
I really enjoyed this book, only wishing there had been more.
It’s loaded with photos and illustrations that not only cover the life of the famed novelist but also the times in which he lived. It’s also filled with quotes from his many novels.
Dickens himself was as complicated as many of the characters he wrote about in his published works. (According to John R. Greenfield, author of the "Dictionary of British Literary Characters," Dickens actually created 989 named characters during his writing career.) Dust jacket text: “Dickens was a mercurial character, with enormous vitality, wit and humour, yet he also lived a sense of loss and longing that constantly reiterated itself in his work. He died having achieved the success and riches he had aspired to while still harbouring the deep sadness he had experienced all his life.”
As with so many, success did not buy him happiness.
“Hard Times,” a novel published in 1854, highlighting the social and economic unbalance of his era, seems somewhat prophetic today, since of late, our news has been dominated by financial woes and stories about men of greed and the ruin they have wrought. Here’s an excerpt from Ackroyd's book about "Hard Times."
“Yet his larger theme is concerned with the absence of fancy, and of wonder. In a world cajoled by a materialist and financial ethic. ‘Now, what I want is, Facts.’ The words of the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind open the book and, indeed, become an apt epigraph for its story of heartlessness and unimaginative greed." To quote the opening of another famous Dickens' novel, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
I really enjoyed this book, only wishing there had been more.
May 20, 2009
I am on a bit of a Dickens kick at the moment. This was an illustrated biography that I bought recently. I think for somebody who just wants the basic story, free of excessive detail, this is an excellent way to go. It obviously has several picturs as well as quotes from the books. I learned quite a bit of this while reading DROOD, actually, but there was new information to be found. It's a quality biography that I found happily informative.
March 24, 2010
Apparently, a complementary biography to a BBC television series on Dickens. Complete with many archival artefacts and photos, it is an engaging albeit uncomplicated take on the life of Charles Dickens - who was perhaps our very first celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic. Ackroyd is a fine writer and he provides a very competent and not totally sympathetic portrait of the amazing, restless and prolific Dickens from his poverty stricken roots to wealth and and acclaim at the end of his life.
February 15, 2024
A very well written bio by ever-knowledgeable Peter Ackroyd. His immense understanding of the subject provides pertinent and clear information in a nicely condensed volume, a great introduction to the life of "the Inimitable Boz." This includes the biographer's brief but insightful, analytic views of Dickens' emotional state of mind at various periods. Lots of photos. A companion to the BBC/PBS series, which I would like to see again.
March 4, 2014
this clearly written biography traces dickens's journey as a man, husband, writer, and social activist thematically in terms of periods of his life. his novels are all placed naturally within this perspective. beautifully illustrated, this book provides an accessible insight into britain's greatest novelist.
May 28, 2016
A very enjoyable biography. Ackroyd presents a good overview of Dickens' life without bogging the reader down with detailed analysis. A good general life, perhaps not for a person consumed with Dickens, but good for anyone else.
February 22, 2013
There is a problem here in that reviews of ackroyd's major biography appear here under the BBC tie in book which is nothing but an assembly of the most obvious facts with a lot of illustrations many of which are irrelevant .
Really this book is not worth reading.
Really this book is not worth reading.
March 29, 2016
This biography of Dickens aroused some controversy among Dickensian scholars because of Ackroyd's attempt to "enter" Dickens's brain. It's meticulously researched, but I far prefer Edgar Johnson's biography (Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph).
August 10, 2023
El libro está muy bien escrito, sin embargo al no tener diálogos se me ha hecho dendo y pesado y eso que adoro a Dickens. David Copperfield es uno de mis libros favoritos de la vida y creo q imaginaba una lectura similar, culpa mía. Este libro no es para mí.
Want to read
May 25, 2007My mother's day gift.
March 28, 2011
I liked the book but perhaps we shouldn't always read bios on our favorite authors!
Read
August 7, 2011A massive biography of Dickens. Very interestingbut slow reading. I don't know if it was worth devoting a month to reading it. In the end, Dickens was dead.
June 5, 2012
I only give it 4 stars because Ackroyd makes no mention of Mark Twain's review of Dicken's later in life reading in Washington.
November 18, 2013
The author overly lionized this deeply flawed, though brilliant and incredibly compassionate writer. Otherwise, a very good read.
December 3, 2016
Very complete and well researched.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews