Claire Tomalin - The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens

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THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

This is feminist biography at its best and it becomes, in Tomalins magical sleuthing, a page-turning Victorian novel while remaining faithful to biographical truth Leon Edel

A wonderful book In telling the Dickens-Ternan story as the story of two people, Tomalin does more than restore an invisible woman to her rightful place in history. She gives us a hitherto invisible man as well Katha Pollit, Newsday

A compulsive read Claire Tomalin makes the Victorian world accessible and has a clear, unreverential approach to Dickens himself Her picture of the London theatre is equally immediate and absorbing Kate Kellaway, listener

As a piece of detective work, this book is elegant and fascinating As social history it is illuminating. The careers of the Ternan sisters make livelier reading than many a novel Sue Gaisford, Independent

I suspect it will come to be seen as one of the crucial womens biographies because of its vivid dramatization of the process by which women have been written out of history and the closely associated, but more subtle, process by which women have been forced to deny their own experiences Sean French, New Statesman & Society

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism all her life. She was literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize for 1974; Shelley and His World (reissued by Penguin in 1992); Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1988), a biography of the modernist writer on whom she also based her 1991 play The Winter Wife; the highly acclaimed The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, which won the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the NCR Book Award in 1991, as well as the Hawthornden Prize; Mrs Jordans Profession (1995), a study of the Regency actress; Jane Austen: A Life (1998); a collection of her literary journalism entitled Several Strangers: Writing from Tliree Decades (1999); and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the Whitbread Biography Award and which went on to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for 2002. All her books are published by Penguin.

CLAIRE TOMALIN

THE STORY OF NELLY TERNAN AND CHARLES DICKENS

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First published by Viking 1990

Published with additional material in Penguin Books 1991

Copyright Claire Tomaiin, 1990,1991

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The acknowledgements on page xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193726-7

TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

For Katharine M. Longley

My first and greatest debt is to Miss Katharine M. Longley who, in an act of rare generosity, placed her own research and unpublished typescript at my disposal. She gave me her time, answered my questions, shared her discoveries and pointed me in the direction of both specialist libraries and private archives and information. She has also allowed me to use photographs in her collection, many of which have never been published before. All this she did without seeking to influence my views in any way. I bow before her scholarship, and my gratitude for both her friendship and her forbearance is partially expressed in the dedication to this book.

My next debt is to other Dickens scholars: Dr Graham Storey, who among many kindnesses allowed me access to the as yet unpublished letters of Dickens, in preparation for later volumes of the Pilgrim Edition; Michael Slater, not only for his book Dickens and Women and his articles in The Dickensian but also for several enjoyable conversations; and George Curry, who kindly gave me a copy of his Charles Dickens and Annie Fields. Dr David Parker, the curator of the Dickens House Museum in Doughty Street, has been constantly supportive in offering advice, providing information and allowing me to use the many excellent resources of the museum. Miss Eileen Power, at one time Assistant Curator, also gave me useful advice at an early stage; her successors Angela Brooker and most recently Andrew Bean have also been helpful.

I am profoundly grateful to the pioneering work of Ada Nisbet, Emeritus Professor of Victorian Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, whose Dickens and Ellen Ternan, published in 1952, made the fruits of years of patient research available in a compact and carefully argued form.

My next large debt is to Robert Cecil Esq., who most kindly allowed me to see his collection of family letters and to transcribe from them; he also made available pictures in his possession.

My thanks go to many libraries and their curators: to the British Library; to the London Library, its excellent Librarian Douglas Matthews and his always helpful staff; to Alexander Wainwright of Princeton University Library, who went to much trouble to assist me with the microfilms and photocopies I needed, as well as other kindnesses; to the late Lola Szladits, Curator of the Berg Collection, her successor Francis O. Mattson and the staff there; to the Pierpont Morgan Library; to Nancy Romero of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; to Ann Caiger, Manuscripts Librarian at University of California, LA; and to the Department of Archives in Arras, France. I also appreciate help received from the staff of the Minster Library, York; the reference section of Newcastle upon Tyne Public Library; Penny Ward of Margate Library; the reference section of Slough Public Library; the Library of the London School of Economics; the Guildhall Library; the John Harvard Library in the Borough High Street; the Public Record Office; and Martin Tupper of Islington Reference Library. I am grateful to the staff of the Theatre Museum, now in Covent Garden; to the Colindale Newspaper Library; to the Imperial War Museum Library; and to the Ministry of Defence Archivists.

I much appreciate being allowed to examine the Dickens box at Messrs. Farrer & Company, and the help extended to me there by Mr R. Robertson. My thanks also go to the Keeper of Archives, The Queens College, Oxford.

To Mrs Lillah Fields I am indebted for hospitality, information and the loan of several precious and personal family possessions.