Michael Slater (1) (1936–)

An extensive biography of this most famous author I found a bit dry and academic at times. Dicken's certainly was fortunate that his success came relatively early as an author and the sheer volume he churned out in serials was remarkable. Slater covers his life from his haunting childhood that surfaces in a number of his famous work. Also his personal relationships in his seeming obsession with his wife's sister and the discarding of that wife for yet another obsession, Nelly. Much detail throughout on literary works yet a scant few pages on his demise.… (meer)

Twelve years before his death, at the height of his popularity, Charles Dickens separated from his wife. Various women were said to be the reason, generally either his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth or an actress, Ellen Ternan. It was a scandal at the time, but his popularity survived it. Few of the numerous biographies that were rushed to press after his death mentioned his possible affair(s). It was only after not only his death, but the death of his last child in 1933 (many of whom devoted themselves to maintaining his image) that biographies with salacious rumors really took off. The attempt to dig up all the dirt possible on Dickens was at least partly based on a newspaper circulation war--one newspaper had just secured the rights to Dickens's last unpublished&finished work, and so all the others tried to make Dickens out to be as terrible as possible, in hopes of poisoning the well. But since there are no letters admitting to the affair, there's really no proof. The author thinks it likely that Ellen and Dickens had an affair, and possible (if not likely) that Ellen bore him a child that died early, but even now there's no way to tell one way or the other.

Slater clearly has an excellent grasp on the subject, but I found this to be a really boring book. It's not actually about Dickens at all--Dickens is just the subject that Slater's real subjects (the biographers, Dickensians and newspapermen of the time) were concerned with.… (meer)

An indispensible biography of Charles Dickens. Aptly subtitled, "A Life Defined By Writing" -- this biography focuses on Dickens' writing, not just his novels but also his short stories, journalism and editing. The process of writing just about every number of every novel is detailed (the major ones were released in 19 monthly installments -- with the final one being a double issues), often down to where Dickens was living, who was visiting him, and what time pressures he was under. In contrast, the death of Dickens' sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, which might get a chapter in a more psychological or personal treatment of Dickens, initially gets just a single paragraph that a less-than-fully alert reader might miss. But then Slater returns to Hogarth's death multiple times as Dickens writes it into books from the Old Curiousity Shop to David Copperfield. Although Dickens' relationship with Ellen Ternen gets more space, Slater refuses to delve or speculate -- and again seems mostly interested in Ternan as a model for some of the women in Dickens' later novels as well as in the geographic pull she exerts on him.

The process by which novels and other writings were composed would not be of interest for most writers. But for Dickens, it is integral. Whether he was sending back letters from America to support his trip there or resuscitating his latest periodical by contributing a novel, the process was an important part of the end result. Great Expectations, for example, would have been a different had Dickens written it in monthly installments as originally planned rather than the weekly numbers he ultimately utilized to help promote his publication All the Year Round.

Slater is an excellent writer and an authority on Dickens who lets his subject speak for himself through extensive excerpts. Although I would not recommend this for casual or light reading (Peter Ackroyd's Dickens would be a better choice for that -- notwithstanding it's 1,000 page length), there isn't a better book for those who are interested.… (meer)