Customer Reviews

Dickens: A Biography

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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.

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.

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.

I have just finished reading Mr. Kaplan's biography of Dickens. I have been reading a number of Dickens' novels, and decided that reading a biography of this master of the novel would provide more insight into what made Dickens write such wonderful books. Mr. Kaplan has set forth a full scholarly account of Dickens, as the extensive notes attest to. I was most struck by Dickens' phenomenal energy in writing all those novels, doing public readings, walking miles a day, and raising a family of eight children! Dickens' relationship with women was also very interesting. Dickens had a strained relationships with his mother, wife and an early love, Maria Beadwell. These relationships reappear in his writings. He also had very close sister/wife relationships with two of his sister-in-laws and his daughters. Although it may never be fully understood why Dickens separated from his wife Catherine after 23 years of marriage, Mr. Kaplan does a fairly good job of explaining this situation.

One is impressed by Dickens' energy, his flair for the theatrical and his overwhelming genius. This biography does a very good job of painting a portrait of Charles Dickens the man and his many activities. Towards the end of the biography, there are times when Mr. Kaplan cronologically jumps and repeats certain events out of sequence. This, and several photos from 1865 labled as 1845 are about the only faults in this very well executed biography.

All you need to know about Charles Dickens is here. Fred Kaplan has given us a well-rounded look at the literary lion in his natural habitat. What more could we ask for, except to savor - anew or again - another of Boz's novels?

We appreciate Dickens because he loves all of his characters so completely - even the most irredeemable ones. With Kaplan's book, we find that Dickens himself is one of his best creations.

two stars due to the tons of information, but way too much that is strangely disconnected from Dickens' vibrant writing and his nearly frantic appreciation of life. Reading this (many passages you have to skip through they are so deadly), it's as though Kaplan waded through all of Dickens' writings even though not one of the novels struck a chord and really got to him. And there's that deadly present tense, i.e. Dickens goes here instead of went, writes to Forster instead of wrote; only makes it all more artificial, distant, bloodless, boring.

This book seems to have been written by a business man and not a man of literature. I felt as though I were reading Charles Dicken's family budget diary rather than a life-history. This biography is lengthy with details that are indescribably boring. I found myself longing for more of the emotional aspects of this marvelous man's life. Kaplan writes in a dry, uninspiring style. I had 'great expectations' for this book but found those expectations dashed to pieces on the rock of boredom.

This books starts out fairly good and then picks up steam in its description of Dickens' youth. But somewhere near the middle it seems to get lost in endless facts which might be called useless. I personally don't care about every single item in Dickens business affairs. I would have personally rather seen more about public reactions to each novel and more discussion about the development of each novel. This would have been a pretty good book had the author cut it in half and perhaps titled it "Dickens: His Life Before 40".

Kaplan is an excellent researcher. His book is also boring as all heck, too. Dickens, in my opinion, is usually quite funny, or poignant, or both. Don't bother, unless you're doing a paper on Dicken's kidney problems or his friends, and who cares?