Product Description

With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."

Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.

Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256686 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-13
• Released on: 2002-05-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Two men who towered over the 19th century are the subjects of new Penguin Lives biographies coming in May. Novelist Jane Smiley's Charles Dickens aims to give a new perspective on the Victorian author, who, she says, was perhaps "the first true celebrity in the modern sense." Instead of giving a chronological account of his life, Smiley (The Age of Grief) presents the man as his contemporaries would have known him, addressing more intimate issues, like his painful childhood, only as they come up in his novels, and showing how he crafted his public persona as carefully as he did his literary creations. Smiley offers her own readings of many of his works. 5-city author tour. ( on sale May 13)
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Smiley, whose novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, presents her new book as an attempt to see Dickens as his contemporaries would have, through his literary works. She does not completely limit herself to the works, also alluding to materials published from biographies. This entertaining and well-written volume follows his publications from 1833 to 1870 and provides a fair and balanced depiction of Dickens as the first modern celebrity. As a novelist, Smiley brings an interesting perspective to her analysis of how Dickens would have used his novel writing to explore his own personal issues. The result is not a biography or a work of literary criticism but rather a general reading of his novels and the events of his life. Recommended for general public and academic collections. Paolina Taglienti, Long Island Univ. Lib., Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Smiley, author of the novel A Thousand Acres (1991), compares Dickens to Shakespeare in her preface, noting they share in common "general fame, worldwide literary status, and essential Englishness." Her intelligent biography examines Dickens' life through his work, starting not with his birth but rather the beginnings of his literary career. After writing short essays for a monthly magazine, Dickens began the serialization of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. Dickens quickly became both a best-selling novelist and a famous man, who had to contend with both the envy of other authors and, much later on, the very public dissolution of his marriage. Dickens' enormous reserves of energy drove him to juggle writing, giving readings (that eventually turned into performances of scenes from his novels), and being a husband and a father to a rapidly growing family. Those seeking a straightforward biography of Dickens will have to look elsewhere, but Smiley's superb and thoughtful analysis should appeal to anyone familiar with the great author's work. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A good brief account of Dickens
For those who want to spend two weeks leaning about Dickens, Peter Ackroyd's book is really excellent. However if you do not have that kind of time, this work by Jane Smiley is excellent. Whoever marries the authors to the subjects should be commended. Jane Smiley is a best-selling author. Who better to write on the foremost novelist during the high noon of the novel as a medium?

This book provided an excellent overview not only of the life of Dickens, which can be summed up as "poor boy makes good," but also the novels themselves. I do not agree with some of Jane Smiley's criticism ("Pickwick Papers" is a good read, despite what she says), but by and large she is on target with a great deal of what she has to say.

Terrific Overview
This lively book provides an overview of the literary achievements and personal life of Charles Dickens. For those Amazon.com customers who, like me, don't know how to approach this writer's vast achievements, I provide this advice from Smiley, who is an intelligent, charming, and enthusiastic biographer: "But a newcomer to Dickens can do no better than to begin with a novel-my suggestions are David Copperfield, to be followed by Great Expectations, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend, in that order, light, dark, light, dark, light, a wonderful chiaroscuro of Dickens's most characteristic and accessible work." Bravo for Jane and her fun and concise treatment of an enormous subject!

A succinct yet superb short biography of Charles Dickens
Jane Smiley is a leading contemporary novelist whose insight into the difficult arcane world of writing for profit is helpful in reviewing our greatest English novelist. As self-described Charles Dickens was the "inimitable." Dickens draws a broad stoke as his thousands of characters lie, cheat,[borrow], love, live and [end life] on the canvas of humanity.
As one who has read all the standard biographies of the 19th behemoth of literature that was Dickens I can highly recommend this excellent book.
Smiley provides a sketch of Dickens life including warts and all. Her dissection of the affair the middle aged author engaged in with actress Ellen Ternan was well done in looking at what may have motivated Dickens to break with his wife Catherine and thumb his nose at Victorian respectability.
Dickens is a mixture of good and bad with the humanity and essential goodness of the man on display.
This little book in the excellent Penguin Viking Biography series could be well used in an introductory course on Dickens, the nineteenth century English novel or on the art of literary biography.
Smiley made me smile and laugh as I explored the mind of a genius with this gifted biographer. It is the best biography I have so far read in this series.