The colourful life of Charles Dickens is depicted by Claire Tomalin in her new biography of the great English author. For those who grew up reading David Copperfield, a Christmas Carol or any number of Dickens’ other classic novels, the biography provides great insight into Dickens’ life experiences which shaped his stories and characters.
I’m liking
The book is well researched and written, using elegant prose to tell Dickens’ story in a way which leads the reader along and keeps us interested in a fully lived life. There are many references along the way to the people in Dickens’ life who were later depicted as characters in his various books. As a long time Dickens fan, it was wonderful to read about a young Mr Fagin who Dickens met early in life (while working in a boot blacking factory) and later became the basis for the well known character in Oliver Twist. Similarly, the book sheds light on Dickens’ early experience of lost love and how that informed the story of David Copperfield (with Copperfield losing his first, and possibly not entirely well suited, wife – but going on to find a lasting love nonetheless).
I remember much of Dickens’ works as having poverty and child labour as key elements of the narratives. A reference to a Dickensian situation is one which smacks of abject and unfair social conditions: the poor house and orphanages where children go hungry. The biography contains details about Dickens’ family’s own trouble with debtors’ prison (his father was jailed for failing to pay a debt) and how he acted on his social conscience by helping people in need.
Things that made me go hmmmm
The book is a solid tome, and takes some time to finish. That said, the references to the Dickens classics throughout meant that much of the time after finishing a chapter I would then want to re-read passages from some of his works which I had already read but just learned something new about; or would jump online to learn more about those stories not yet read but which had been referenced in the book. Be prepared that you may want to go on a binge of Dickens’ fiction after finishing this biography.
The conclusion
This is a very interesting book, combining strong biographical details from a life lived in the Victorian age together with insight into some of the best known characters and stories created in the English language. Even if you have never read any of Dickens’ novels, the twists and turns of Dickens’ life provide food for thought – as described by Tomalin “[Dickens] could make people laugh and cry, and arouse anger, and he meant to amuse and to make the world a better place.”
