Dickens: A Biography (Hardcover)

by Fred Kaplan (Author) "ON AN EXQUISITE SEPTEMBER DAY IN 1860, CHARLES DICKENS burned "the accumulated letters and papers of twenty years..." (more)
Key Phrases: superfluous fierceness, own wild way, blacking factory, Gad's Hill, John Dickens, Household Words (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This first major biography of Dickens in nearly 40 years is a winning mix of insight, narrative skill and shrewd judgment. Kaplan ( Thomas Carlyle ) shows how powerfully both as man and artist Dickens was shaped by the experience of his youth: on the one hand the humiliations showered on him by his penurious and feckless parents, on the other his mental escape into the bright world of the 18th-century novel which gave him his models for good and bad character. In tracing Dickens's career from "boy prodigy" to grizzled Victorian giant of letters, from the enchanted world of The Pickwick Papers to the grim and unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood , Kaplan covers his roles as journalist, novelist, social reformer and businessman, shedding considerable new light on his relations with his parents, wife and mistress, on his two trips to America and on his triumphant but exhausting public readings from his novels. Dickens was convivial, loyal, secretive and arrogant, with a "performance personality" that required applause for self-definition. He was also profoundly restless. Indeed, that word rings like a bell throughout the book. Illustrations.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
As the first major Dickens biography in many years, this book is welcome and invites comparison. Kaplan, author of the less ambitious Dickens and Mesmerism ( LJ 3/1/76), delivers a solid product. Less chocked with raw data than, say, John Forster's or Edgar Johnson's , his book is more pleasurable to read; on the other hand, it contains much more raw data than the more "readable" biographies like Stephen Leacock's. With all that has been written about Dickens, one would not expect startling revelations, and one does not get them. But Kaplan has synthesized the vast amount of biodata into a coherent account of Dickens's public and private selves and, to a lesser degree, the way autobiography figures into the novels. Important to Dickens scholars while accessible to the general public.Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse,
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 607 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688043410
• ISBN-13: 978-0688043414
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,057,686 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Bio of a Great Author, June 21, 2002

By	Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Charles Dickens is without a doubt one of my favorite authors. I have read all of his major novels (some numerous times) and many of his other works. The most important things to know about Dickens are right there in his own words. However, the man himself is a fascinating subject from his rise through a poor youth to his triumph as the most famous authors of his age or, indeed, any age. Certainly, Dickens is worthy of a well-written biography. Fortunately, there are well-done ones out there.

I had read Kaplan's book a number of years ago and recently read it again. It remains one of the best. Kaplan gives us a complete and balanced portrait of Dickens' entire life. He is sufficiently laudatory of Dickens' successes without being fawning. Additionally, he is not afraid to point out Dickens' weaknesses--as a son, husband, father, friend and author, though his weaknesses as a author are few enough. We get a real sense of Dickens as a human being.

One of the reasons I think Kaplan is so successful in his portrait is that he weaves numerous quotes from letters by Dickens and his many correspondents almost seamlessly into the text. It gives more of a feeling for Dickens as a man of his time as opposed to looking back and trying to compose a modern view of him. I also like the way Kaplan shows Dickens as an acute observer who integrated people and places he knew into his fiction. There are risks in reading a novel too biographically but it is interesting to try to pin down an author's inspirations and themes. Kaplan handles this quite well but he doesn't go into any of the novels in depth so someone unfamiliar with Dickens' books might have trouble in some places.

Overall, Kaplan finds an nice balance between depth and readability. He is able to pack a lot into 556 pages. Anyone with an interest in Dickens would be foolish not to read one of the best biographies of the man in print.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, well-researched, scholarly work, October 24, 2003

By	K. Sterling "freelance writer" (Richmond, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dickens: A Biography (Paperback)

The key word is "scholarly." If you want the run-of-the-mill pulp bio, you won't find it here. What you will find is a treasure of information on Dickens and his life. I have read every major biography of Dickens, and Kaplan's work is by far the best. I don't know how others could call it "boring," for I couldn't put it down. If you need your biographies "punched up," perhaps you should try Ackroyd's bio, which is more colorful but also more rambling. This is solid work, from a solid researcher.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars out of focus, April 13, 2001

By	Mark Phillips (Pacifica, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dickens: A Biography (Paperback)

Strange and unsatisfying biography, focused on minutae of Dickens' vacations to the exclusion of his literature.

"From Rome, they went to Siena and then Florence, happy to have had only three days of rain. On the road, they carried their own brandy, cloves, and tea" [page. 297-8]. The moment-to-moment of this trip fills ten pages, including so much emphasis re the facial grooming habits of the three men concerned, and the qualities of the various beds they slept in, that it's tempting to describe the text as voyeuristic. Follwed by just three pages re Bleak House, perhaps Dickens' most adventurous and anomalous work (two narrators). To me, a quirky choice of priorities, at best.

Perhaps the intention of the author was to present "the human side of Dickens" as a supplement to the literary biographies which already exist. If so, a more appropriate title might be "Not By Literature Alone", or etc. Readers interested in Dickens' writing as opposed to his leisure might want to look elsewhere.