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Charles Dickens
 
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Charles Dickens (Hardcover)

by Michael Slater (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £25.00
Price: £17.78 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 720 pages
  • Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (28 Aug 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0300112076
  • ISBN-13: 978-0300112078
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 5.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 19,686 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #4 in  Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Playwrights
    #13 in  Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Poets
    #44 in  Books > Study Books > Undergraduate & Postgraduate > Arts & Humanities > Literature & Drama > Drama > Criticism

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Product Description

Review

'No living person is a greater authority on the life and works of Charles Dickens than Michael Slater.' --Claire Tomalin (05/11/2009)

'...it is a triumph of compression... immediately takes its place as the most authoritative, fair-minded and navigable of modern biographies... Slater, the most distinguished of modern Dickens scholars, is master of detail...' --John Bowen, Times Literary Supplement, 16 October, 2009

Product Description

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.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a remarkable achievement, 11 Oct 2009
By Paul Grainger (Lincoln, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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 By Writing is an intelligent portrait of a man in his element; affable, businesslike, energetic, occasionally secretive, unbelievably imaginative and, most of all, fully committed to the profession of writing.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and compelling, 13 Jan 2010
By Mark Wallace (West of Ireland) - See all my reviews
This is, according to the blurb, the first major Dickens' biography in 20 years, since Ackroyd's "Dickens". Very little new information has come to light about Dickens in those 20 years, so this covers mostly the same ground as previous Dickens' biographies. As Dickens was famous for most of his adult life, from age 24 onwards, his life is well-documented, but his life after his 1858 marital break-up is still something of a mystery. He frequently disappeared during this period, often to France, leaving no account of his movements. There is little doubt that most of these disappearances involved trips to see Ellen Ternan, but there is no hard evidence about their relationship, just conjecture. Dickens was extremely secretive about Ternan, and very rarely mentioned her in the course of his voluminous personal correspondence, and when he did so it was usually in code: "N", or "the patient" (the last title he first applied to her in the aftermath of the famous Staplehurst railway crash of 1865, and retained it afterwards).
The main text of this book is 623 pages in this hardback edition, and provides a diligent and thorough account of Dickens' life, which was a busy and eventful one. It makes copious use of Dickens' letters, many of which are very entertaining and revealing, and also of quotes from Dickens' works, both his novels and his lesser-known journalistic work. Overall, this book is well-researched and briskly-written. It contains many illustrations and photos, some quite unfamiliar. If I were to make a criticism, it is perhaps not as colourful and as characterful as the best biographies, but it is very interesting and useful nonetheless.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Charled Dickens - Michael Slater, 19 Jan 2010
By J. R. Kilner (Norfolk, UK) - See all my reviews
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This is an excellent book which reveals in a single volume much of Dicken's thoughts as well as providing a solid background to his works. Both scholars and laymen alike can expect to find the work interesting, relevant and informative. I have no hesitation in recommending this definitive product.
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