Claire Tomalin - Charles Dickens: A Life

A Life

VIKING
an imprint of
PINGUIN BOOKS

Cast List

Prologue: The Inimitable

7 Blackguards and Brigands

19 Wayward and Unsettled

27 The Remembrance of My Friends

By the same author

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

Shelley and His World

Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life

The Invisible Woman:

The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens

The Winter Wife

Mrs Jordans Profession

Jane Austen: A Life

Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man

Poems of Thomas Hardy

(selected and introduced)

I dedicate this book to the memory of two remarkable women: my mother, the composer Muriel Emily Herbert, 18971984, who shared with me her enjoyment of Dickens when I was a child; and my French grandmother, a schoolteacher, Franceline Jennaton Delavenay, 18731963, who in about 1888, when she was at boarding school in Grenoble, read David Copperfield in its entirety in English, and loved Dickens ever afterwards.

My sister and I first realised Mr Dickens himself as a sort of brilliance in the room, mysteriously dominant and formless. I remember how everybody lighted up when he entered.

Annie Thackeray writing in 1913

I suppose that for at least five-and-twenty years of his life, there was not an English-speaking household in the world where his name was not as familiar as that of any personal acquaintance, and where an allusion to characters of his creating could fail to be understood.

George Gissing in 1898

The life of almost any man possessing great gifts, would be a sad book to himself.

Charles Dickens in 1869

It will not do to draw round any part of such a man too hard a line.

John Forster, friend of Dickens, in his biography

All illustrations are reproduced courtesy of the Charles Dickens Museum except where indicated.

p. 1

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, statesman and playwright (Collection Michael Burden/The Bridgeman Art Library)

p. 2

The Marshalsea prison yard, where John Dickens was briefly imprisoned (The Print Collector/Heritage Images)

p. 3

Hungerford Steps, site of the first blacking factory where the young Charles Dickens worked (City of London/Heritage Images)

p. 4

Wellington Academy, Dickenss school in Mornington Crescent (Bookman, 1914)

p. 5

The Adelphi Theatre, Strand (reproduced by permission of English Heritage NMR)

p. 6

No. 48 Doughty Street, Dickenss first house

p. 7

Hablot Browne, Phiz, illustrator of most of Dickenss novels (Bookman, 1914)

p. 8

p. 1

Miss Coutts, philanthropist ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

p. 2

Dickens, wife Catherine and sister-in-law Georgina, drawing by Daniel Maclise

p. 3

Dickens reading The Chimes in 1844 (Mary Evans Picture Library)

p. 4

Boulogne-sur-Mer, c.1850 (The Granger Collection/Topfoto)

p. 5

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, photograph by James Mudd, 1857 (Mary Evans Picture Library)

p. 6

Mens dormitory at Coldbath Fields Prison, 1857 (Illustrated Times)

p. 7

John Leech ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

p. 8

p. 1

Portrait of Dickens by W. P. Frith, 1859, commissioned by John Forster

p. 2

Nelly Ternan (courtesy of Mrs L. Fields)

p. 3

Front of Gads Hill House (Bookman, 1914, photograph by Mason & Co., 1866)

p. 4

Charles Fechter, French actor ( National Portrait Gallery, London)

p. 5

Dickens reading the murder of Nancy by Sikes

p. 6

Henry Dickens, the sixth and only successful son ( Lebrecht Authors)

p. 7

American cartoon of Dickens, based on a photograph by Jeremiah Gurney, 1867

p. 8

Sketch by Thackeray of Dickens, Thackeray himself and Francis Mahony (Father Prout) with Macrone in his office

Cover of monthly number of serialized The Pickwick Papers (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Cruikshank drawing of Dickens in 1837

Engraving of Dickenss head from Maclises 1839 portrait of Dickens, the Nickleby Portrait (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I)

Palazzo Peschiere, Genoa, engraving from drawing by Batson

Rosemont, Lausanne, engraving from drawing by Mrs Watson (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. II)

The offices of Household Words in Wellington Street (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Tavistock House, acquired by Dickens in July 1851 (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. III)

Dickenss working notes in the Great Expectations manuscript ( Wisbech and Fenland Museum)

The chalet at Gads Hill (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. III)

Caricature from an American paper showing Dickens and his tour manager, George Dolby, on the eve of their departure for England (Dolbys Charles Dickens as I Knew Him)

The back of Gads Hill, showing the conservatory (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. III)

Dickenss grave in Westminster Abbey, engraved from a drawing by Luke Fildes (Forsters The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. III)

John Dickens and his young family lived in Rochester