Charles Dickens [Hardcover]

Any general reader in search of a single volume covering the life and work of Charles Dickens needs to look no further than this publication. Michael Slater has written a grandiose account that considers the author from several different perspectives. Both his public and his private personae are examined in detail, revealing his social consciousness as well as things that irritated him such as female emancipation. Slater goes on to describe the interaction that provided the genesis for Dickens's work before focusing in a comprehensive manner on its evolution. The stories, essays and sketches are examined in the context of their influence on the more substantial works, the novels. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined in Writing is an intelligent portrait of a man in his element; affable yet businesslike, energetic, considerate, unbelievably imaginative and, most of all, obsessively dedicated to the profession of writing.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) the Victorian literary genius has been blessed by many outstanding biographers. These authors include his friend John Forster and such modern biographers as Fred Kaplan and Peter Acyroyd. Now a new excellent Dickens biography has been added to the lister. Dr. Michael Slater, emeritus professor of Victorian Literature at the University of London has produced a massive biography of Boz which stretches to 623 small print pages. The book is well illustrated with period drawings and photographs and is an excellent work for 21st century readers who may or may not be familiar with the king of the three decker and periodical Victorian novel.
What sets this biography apart from the rest?
1. Slater focuses on brief but cogent exegesis of the major novels and fictional work done by Dickens from his Sketches by Boz to his final unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Slater does a great job of explaining the major themes of such classics as Oliver Twist; Barnaby Rudge; Nicholas Nickleby; Dombey and Sons; David Copperfield; Bleak House; Little Dorrit; Martin Chuzzelwit; Great Expectations; Our Mutual Friend; A Tale of Two Cities and Dickens first smasheroo bestseller "Pickwick Papers."
2. Slater also reviews Dickens career as an editorial genius of his periodicals "Household Words" and "All the Year Round" as well as "Master Humphrey's Clock" which he edited in his young adulthood. Slater introduces us to many fictional short pieces Dickens wrote for these journals.
3. Slater discusses in details the Christmas books produced by Dickens from "A Christmas Carol" of 1843 to such further stories as The Chimes, The Battle of Life, The Cricket on the Hearth and The Bells.
4. Dickens as a professional writer is the chief focus of this book but Slater provides all the biographical information a curious modern reader would wish to know about Boz. We learn of Dickens concerns for social justice, reform of the legal and judicial system and his concern for the elderly, ingnorant and poor masses. We also learn of his separation from his wife Catherine in 1858 and his long affair with actress Ellen "Nelly" Ternan which continued until his early death in 1870.
Dickens was a complex blend of kindness and cruelty; hypocrisy and geniune concern for the downtrodden. He treated his wife in a horrible manner by divorcing her; was a so-so father to his ten children and could be rude and vindictive. He could also be kind reaching out to help friends in need. Dickens was a huge blast of energetic restlessness; he walked several miles each day and night; knew London better than anyone else in the Victorian age and was a liberal in politics and religion (he left the Church of England to become a Unitarian).
Dickens had to serve in a degrading position in a blacking factory; was denied higher education and did not care for his mother. Dickens did love his feckless Micawberish father John. Charles Dickens was a born actor producing many amateur theatricals throughout his life. His grinding speaking tours in the United Kingdom and United States wore him down and probably greatly contributed to his early demise.
Charles Dickens remains this reviewer's favorite novelist. Take him for what he was worth Mr. Dickens was a writer of genius burdened with human faults. Michael Slater has written a powerful study of Dickens which deserves to be widely read.

Charles Dickens is one of those towering figures who needs a new biography every few years. He was a many-sided man, a kind of living literary institution in his own right. Scholars are still having a hard time pinning him down as the 200th anniversary of his birth looms in 2012.

British Dickens expert Michael Slater has produced a massively researched and closely reasoned appraisal of Dickens that presents him through the lens of his own words --- not only his 16 magnificent novels but the flood of short stories, magazine pieces, journalism, letters and speeches that poured unceasingly from his quill pen.

First of all, the book is a marvel of scholarly research. Slater has examined almost everything Dickens wrote and exposed connections that reflect Dickens's use and reuse of ideas, experiences and images in different settings throughout his whole body of work. It will be a revelation to those who know Dickens only through the novels. Slater has gone out of his way to relate those novels to lesser-known pieces and to plead the case for the centrality of those shorter pieces to any adequate assessment of the man and his life.

At the same time, the book takes full notice of all the central themes of the Dickens story: his passionate advocacy of relief for the poor, his disdain for most of the political institutions of his day, his concept of literature as a great and noble calling that requires hard work of anyone who wants to practice it, his colorful and turbulent personal life, and his passion for travel, or rather for what Slater calls "socially investigative sightseeing" --- visits to prisons, poorhouses and asylums that were not in the tourist guidebooks.

Dickens's concern for the poor led him to aim what he called "sledgehammer blows" at politicians or fatuous clergymen who ignored the problems he saw festering in the streets of London during the long nighttime walks he loved to take. It is no accident that in his novels very few if any lawyers or clergymen come off favorably.

Dickens was a control freak whose zeal for having things his way extended to criticism of the facial expressions in the illustrations for his books. In describing his famous involvement in elaborate amateur theatrical productions, Slater says again and again that Dickens was not happy unless he could control every detail of the show: casting, scenery, costumes, lighting, stage direction --- in short, the whole affair. Slater demonstrates that he was an obsessive organizer, a "born master of ceremonies."

Another major theme is Dickens's enormous capacity for work. He would be grinding out a major novel, editing a magazine, organizing a play production, and supervising the operation of a famous home for wayward girls --- all pretty much at the same time. In his early years, the writing of two novels would be going on at the same time --- he would finish up the last serial installments of one while getting started on the next and at the same time carrying on a volume of correspondence that he compared to that of "a secretary of state." Even his leisure hours were, in Slater's word, "strenuous."

Slater generally reserves his own critical judgments for the novels and stories. He is, however, candid (and critical) on Dickens's separation from his wife and on his late-in-life affair with actress Ellen Ternan. One major theme that he pretty much neglects is Dickens's shameful campaign to isolate his nine children from their mother after the separation. He concludes that no one can know for certain if Dickens and Ternan were sexually involved, and on the literary front he resists the temptation to offer a theory on how the unfinished THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD would conclude if its author had lived to tell us.

This book is the best overall treatment of the Charles Dickens phenomenon since Edgar Johnson's two-volume effort in the 1950s. Slater has taken full advantage of new Dickens material that has come to light since Johnson's day and produced a masterpiece.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)