Product Description

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. Dickens's novels brim with references: they are located in the places he lived in and visited, peopled with characters he knew, and inspired by the preoccupations that haunted his mind. Ackroyd highlights the reality of Victorian life, warts and all, and the issues that sparked Dickens's fervent calls for social reform; and he also charts the influential landmarks of that era, such as the coming of the railways, the effects upon society of the industrial revolution and the expansion of the British Empire. Dickens was a complex personality. He apparently had everything - fame, success, wealth - but he died harbouring the great sadness he had carried with him all his life, and he was humble enough to forbid a grand funeral. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life. Although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should offend his middle-class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow-author Wilkie Collins and, for the final 13 years of his life, kept a secret mistress, Ellen Ternan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149440 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In this remarkable new biography, Peter Ackroyd offers a different view of Dickens to that presented in his earlier study of the author. In that book, Ackroyd's attempts to mimic the voice of the great writer were highly controversial, though some saw the book as a radical re-invention of the biography form. There is no arguing with the brilliant achievement of the more straightforward Charles Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion, however; the picture of Dickens and his complicated private life that emerges is fastidiously detailed and powerfully evocative, while Ackroyd's customary skill at creating a panoply of the city of London is as dazzling as ever (London, is, in fact, the subject of another biography by the author, who is unquestionably the keenest chronicler of the city's colourful history). Here, Ackroyd attempts to peel away the mask of a man whose life was outwardly a picture of Victorian rectitude, but whose love life was as complicated (and unconventional) as any modern writer. Dickens had everything--fame, success and riches--but he died harbouring a deep sadness he had experienced all his life. He was a man of mercurial character, had enormous vitality and humour, but he also had a sense of loss and longing that would constantly appear in his work. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life: although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should upset his middle-class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow author Wilkie Collins, and, for the last 13 years of his life, kept a secret mistress.

While presenting a warm but astringent portrait of the man who (along with George Eliot) can be classed as the greatest writer of his age, Ackroyd also masterfully recreates the relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, a strong and intelligent woman (herself the subject of a biography by Claire Tomalin, The Inviisble Woman who, like her lover, outwardly observed the proprieties while living her real life behind closed doors. Ackroyd also vividly conjures the reality of Victorian life, the issues that sparked Dickens' fervent call for social reform, and the great landmarks of the time, which profoundly affected his life and work. --Barry Forshaw

Review
In this remarkable new biography, Ackroyd offers a different view of Dickens to that presented in his earlier study of the author. Dickens had everything - fame, success and riches. He was mercurial, had enormous vitality and humour, along with a sense of loss and longing that would constantly appear in his work. Like many eminent Victorians, he led a double life: although he insisted that nothing in the newspapers he edited should upset his middle class readers, he regularly indulged in dubious night-time escapades with fellow author Wilkie Collins and kept a secret mistress, Ellen Ternan. Ackroyd vividly conjures the reality of Victorian life, the issues that sparked Dickens' fervent calls for social reform which profoundly affected his life and work.

Peter Ackroyd's writing is never less than compelling - one of his gifts is saying in a sentence that which would take someone else a paragraph - and this biography of Dickens is no exception. Published to accompany the BBC television series, the book's aim - and achievement - is to get inside the skin of the contradictory man who was indisputably one of the great writers of his time. His affinity with the underclass was derived from an uncomfortable period at the age of 12 when he was forced to work in a London blacking factory after his father, who drank, ended up in prison for unpaid debts. It was only through his phenomenal talent and frightening energy that the young Dickens, fortunately allowed to attend school again once his father was released, completed a three-year shorthand course in just three months, and embarked on a career as a parliamentary reporter. The author's marriage to Catherine comes under the microscope, as does his obsession with his sister-in-law, who lived with the couple until her tragic early death. We follow the couple on their successful, if controversial, tour of America and sympathise with Dickens over his ever-increasing financial responsibilities, with an expanding family of children and feckless parents and brothers to support. It seems that a childhood-instilled fear of penury, his passion for storytelling and that for exposing the poor living conditions of the working class all combined to produce Dickens's prodigiously energetic and passionate approach to his work. The passions were as private as they were public; a long-standing affair with the bright and beautiful actress Ellen Ternan precipitated the end of a marriage that had become lacklustre and stultifying. There was no divorce, but the couple formally separated. Ackroyd sums up the contradictions of the author's life perfectly on the last page, noting that while his death was mourned by the great and the good worldwide, and the British public queued in their thousands to pay their respects, neither Catherine Dickens nor Ellen Ternan attended his burial. A good read, and all the erudition one would expect from a writer of Ackroyd's calibre. (Kirkus UK)

The Times
‘A breathtaking feat of scholarship’

Customer Reviews

Unsatisfying and frustrating
Without realising it I picked up the abridged version of Peter Ackroyd's Dickens, and perhaps this is why I cannot agree with the good reviews of this book. It is well written and goes into great detail about all happenings- every story, every periodical, every novel, however the abridged version (of around 600 pages) refuses to talk about the important emotional relationships in Dickens' life. Just over 4 paragraphs are given to his break up with his wife (and most of these concern the legal settlement rather than any meaningful analysis of the break up). His relationship with his mother and father are mentioned at the beginning of the book but nothing pays off further into the book. Ackroyd asserts that Dickens had an ambiguous and not altogether good relationship with his mother and then proceeds to produce not one piece of evidence or feeling to back this statement up. Ackroyd is happy to make fatalistic assumptions; for example Dickens thinking train carriages were tilting to the left side after his crash 'because he had a swollen left foot' but is not willing to explore in any detail his relationship with Ellen Ternan, or track IN ANY WAY his falling out of love with his wife. Ackroyd also fails to explore Dickens' relationship with his children in any meaningful way- mentioning that his sons always felt inadequate but again not giving us any indication or evidence to suggest this was the case.

After 600 pages I was so dissatisfied I felt like going to read the primary source material myself in order that I could understand Dickens not in the context of his periodical, his stories and his books but as a man who had relationships with people around him.

Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as a historical biography (it is worth pointing out that this was actually written by a historian instead of a journalist, novelist and literary critic) shows a greater command of the material available and is able to plot relationships and feelings. In the abridged edition of Dickens, at least, Ackroyd fails spectacularly to do so. I don't know whether I wish I had picked up the full version, if I was to get through 1200 pages with the same conclusion I can only imagine my further frustration.

Brings Dickens utterly to life
I know that Peter Ackroyd has researchers working for him, so I assume the facts which he offers about Dickens are true. That being so, I greatly admire the way he so brilliantly weaves his material together, creating a picture of a living, breathing man - a genius who was irritating, temperamental, likeable, egocentric, self contradictory and generally almost impossible. Not only this but he puts Dickens in his period: he shows us what public life was like at the time and sketches in many individuals that Dickens knew, lived and worked with. He suggests what Dickens might have been aiming for at various times of his life, and what he might have felt and thought. There is inevitably some guesswork in this but after all, nobody can REALLY know another person, and Ackroyd's portrait, based as it is on research, probably contains more truth than the social front Dickens presented to most of the people who knew him personally. So I do believe this is the nearest we will ever get to understanding him, and highly recommend the book. By the way, this is the abridged version, but it is so illuminating and fascinating that I will now go and investigate the longer version.

Astounding
I am in the perhaps somewhat bizarre position of never having read any novel by Dickens himself, and regardless of that, finding myself utterly captivated by this biography. Is it correct? I wouldn't know as I've never read other Dickens-biographies. Is it complete and exhaustive? Probably not, no biography can be. All I do know is that it's truly magnificently written, and had me completely spellbound for all of its 579 pages (in my edition).