Charles Dickens: A Life

“She is such a good biographer. I would read anything by her. She’s so intelligent. She is sympathetic to him but she is not blind to him. She gets his energy, his ferocity. He could be callous. People always say, ‘Oh, he was horrible to his wife.’ Well he was. He chucked her out of the family home when the youngest child was only 6. He said she was a terrible mother, but we have no evidence of that, at all. So he did behave badly. I’m afraid that when marriages break down, people do.She writes about his whole life brilliantly.” Read more...

The Best Charles Dickens Books

Jenny Hartley, Biographer