Why do I keep hearing about Dickens?
This is just the start of it. 7 February 2012 is the bicentennary of Dickens’ birth, and there are all sorts of commemorative shenanigans planned for next year. Expect lots more biographies and documentaries.
Who’s Claire Tomalin?
An award-winning biographer of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Mary Wollstonecraft and Katherine Mansfield. Her background is journalism rather than academia. She’s married to the author Michael Frayn.
What’s the deal with this biography?
Tomalin’s book claims to offer a concise, rounded portrait of the man and his work. She doesn’t hold back from making judgments on his tricky personal life (in 1990 she published The Invisible Woman, an account of Dickens’ affair with the actress Nelly Ternan) but is in no doubt of his literary greatness.
Have the critics been positive?
Mostly, yes.
Writing in the Literary Review, John Sutherland admired Tomalin’s “forensic acuteness” and found her “refreshingly unforgiving about his ‘dark side’”. Fellow biographer Jenny Uglow called the book “hypnotically vivid” her Guardian review, while Sunday Times critic John Carey thought it was “illuminating and, as lives of Dickens go, refreshingly short”, pointing out it was almost a third of the length of Peter Ackroyd’s 1990 biography. Carey also warned Dickens fans to prepare for controversial verdicts on his work, but noted “courting disagreement is part of Tomalin’s vitality.”
Any dissenting views?
A couple.
Philip Hensher, in his Spectator review, admitted Tomalin’s biography was “scrupulous and often well-considered”, but thought it wasn’t as good as Peter Ackroyd’s: “Her failure…is in underestimating the centrality of Dickens’s humour.”
And while Independent on Sunday reviewer Tom Sperlinger thought the book “succeeded brilliantly” in its set-pieces, he found it “an essentially conservative biography”, adding Tomalin had “few fresh insights into Dickens’s work”.
Verdict:
Depends what you’re after. If you’ve never read a Dickens biography before this would be an excellent place to start. If your bookshelf is already teeming with studies of the great Boz, you’re better off waiting for the paperback.
Where can I find out more?
Read David Sexton’s interview with Claire Tomalin in the Evening Standard
Watch a video of Claire Tomalin talking about her book (see above)
Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin is published by Viking (RRP: £30).
Anna Baddeley is editor of The Omnivore http://www.theomnivore.co.uk, which rounds up press reviews of books, films and plays.
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