Customer Reviews

Dickens

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's absolutely shocking Peter Ackroyd's magisterial and magical biography of Charles Dickens has fallen out of print: I think I had more pure readerly pleasure reading this work than just about any biography or novel I've read in the last fifteen years. This is really a one-of-a-kind work: Ackroyd writes his life of Dickens as if it were a Dickens novel, and the descriptions of Dickens's London and Rochester spill out in page after page of densely glorious prose. It's a long book, and it is not lightly undertaken, and Ackroyd does some very out-of-fashion gestures here (like profess his belief in Dickens' genius, as other reviewers have noted) very readily. But I can't think of a biography I would recommend more highly.

. . . but no adjective, or string of adjectives, can do Ackroyd's massive, majestic biography justice. Dickens is, with Victoria, the archetypical Victorian, and he is here fully realized, in all his contradictory dimensions: the best-known and best-loved writer of his day, but perpetually insecure and ashamed of his "ungentlemanly" background; wealthy yet financially ever insecure and working feverishly for material advancement; outgoing and flamboyantly dramatic, yet profoundly interior and haunted by irrepressible demons; the great celebrator of hearth and home who sired 10 children but who abandoned his wife of 22 years for a curious relationship with an actress more than half his age; the man who toasted Shakespeare's birthday as the anniversary also of the Bard's gallery of immortal characters, who saw himself as a similar progenitor but who would "write" his friends, compulsively objectifying them, family, and acquaintances into manipulable, construed, understandable "characters" - indeed, the most capacious literary imagination since Shakespeare but a jittery control addict for whom everything, and everybody, had to be in its right place.

Ackroyd has read every word Dickens wrote - the novels, stories, journalism, letters, inscriptions - and apparently, and more astonishingly, everything ever written ABOUT Dickens - by his circle of literary and profession friends, rivals, reviewers and critics, acquaintances, memoirists who encountered him but once, otherwise unknown British, Scottish, Continental, or American diarists who happened to note a Dickens "sighting" whether or not words were exchanged. All these gleanings Ackroyd shapes convincingly into cumulative aspects of character, incidents that inform Dickens's work, information about the author's public bearing, mannerisms, speech, likes, dislikes, behavior in almost every imaginable range of situations - "in short" - to call on Micawber - a full portrait. And with remarkable efficiency and literary felicity, Ackroyd situates Dickens within his rapidly changing era, as long-distance horse-drawn coaches give way to rail travel, as the stench and filth of pre-Reform London yields to reformist impulses of every stripe, as the Empire advances and London is transformed into a great capital of monuments and squares and Imperial architecture. (And, as with his engrossing biography of Thomas More, Ackroyd introduces London as a major character and influence on his subject, a conceit Ackroyd, himself the author of a knowing, loving "biography" of London, pulls off beautifully.)

Most important for devotees of Charles Dickens - and if you're searching for a 1200 page (scandalously) out-of-print biography, you are surely that - Ackroyd demonstrates convincingly how the work reflects the life, the personality, the influences, the environment, and all the contradictions of Dickens the man. Ackroyd carefully walks the line between reading too much into the life from the work, but draws careful correspondences between the tensions of the life and their realizations in fiction. The chapters devoted to Dickens in the throes, or ecstasies, of creation - for so does his creative moods and energies vary - are among the book's most compelling passages. Scarcely ever has the sinews of literary creativity been laid so believably bare, by a biographer who is himself a prolific, and highly imaginative, writer. The most powerful impression one draws from Ackroyd's matchless story is the extent to which a protean Dickens embodied to a great degree all his mightiest creations, the dark and the bright, and not merely the plainly autobiographical Nickeby, Pip, and David Copperfield.

When I finally closed Ackroyd's Dickens, I was nearly inconsolable at the loss of someone I felt I had come to know so well. A brilliant life, radiantly told, and a book that deserves to be - and, I pray, will soon be - back in print.

It's a rare biography that leaves you with the feeling that there's nothing more that could be said about its subject. This is one of them. It helps that Ackroyd has so much space to work with. (In this respect, it's like Jackson J. Benson's "The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer" - also shamefully out of print.) But utimately it's a function of Ackroyd's profound understanding of the various aspects of Dickens' character and genius. The occasional veering into fantasia is a bold experiment that, in my opinion, fails decisively but these brief chapters are infrequent and simple to skip. They are a trivial blemish on the face of this monument of scholarship and imagination.

This book, in my opinion, is not only the finest biography of Dickens, it is arguably the finest and most sensitive biography ever written. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in Dickens. From the moment I began this book, from the point I read Ackroyd's comments on the apparent fact that we would all be literally "sick" with the smells, sounds, filth etc. if we were transported back to Dickens' era, I knew I was reading the work of a wirter who had almost literally been there, with Dickens and his family and confreres, and who was utterly devoted to his material. Until I read this book, I had never been able to get through a Dickens novel. Once I had finished the book, I proceeded to read all of Dickens I could lay my hands on (enthralled), and am currently re-reading the biography. The book proves what I have always believed - novelists write the best biography - and the best history, as well (e.g., Shelby Foote on the Civil War). Shame on publishing for letting this fine work lapse.

There are some oddities in the style of Mr. Ackroyd, and his book contains some, what might be called, experimental chapters, fantasies or dreams or prose poems on subjects the author associates with Dickens. Ordinarily, I would find these things a bit off-putting.

But Mr. Ackroyd succeeds in giving us an overwhelmingly animated and penetrating portrait of the great Victorian author. This huge book - and no smaller effort could capture Dickens' spirit - crackles with energy, the very kind of driving energy so characteristic of Dickens himself.

Dickens was a strange man with immense drives and desires going off in many directions and personal habits that might well at times be regarded as unbalanced. He was not the sentimental, storytelling Victorian father figure he is sometimes regarded, although he could be quite sentimental about family and friends and his storytelling ability had few equals.

He behaved at times as a petty tyrant and was highly opinionated, always a man of immense curiosity, a traveler, a political activist, a generous man, a workaholic, a man eager for every possible shred of success and acclaim, a talented actor and mimic, a man seemingly possessed at times, as when carrying on conversations with himself, imitating his own characters in a mirror or going for walks as long as twenty miles alone or living with the ghosts of his fractured childhood.

A whirlwind of experience and desires helped make this naturally talented man such a great novelist. There are similarities to the titanic storm that was Beethoven. In both cases, the young man in his first blush of success could be truly charming while the aging figure could be quite unsettling.

The book contains many interesting anecdotes and details of Dickens' England, as well as Dickens' America since he made two journeys to America, a place he both hated and was fascinated by.

Highly recommended to all lovers of good biography, all students of English literature, and all students of English history.

I have become an Ackroyd fan in a mere two books (the other was The House of Dr. Dee). What a fascinating and magnificent way Ackroyd has of describing real human lives! Dickens walks, sings, remembers, cries, writes, through this book. He is alive as an actor, clown, jokester, gamester, humanitarian and (unfortunately) self centered egoistic mirror-crazy eccentric philander in loud clothes. As I read Ackroyd's biography I simultaneously love and hate Dickens; yet I also come to understand how Dickens' own life (especially his childhood) is written into his books. Amazing

There is evidently no middle ground about this book, people absolutely love it, or despise it. The oddity about this reaction to this very odd and in my opinion very great, biography of Dickens is that I can sympathise with a lot of what the 2 (so far) negative reviewers say. The most honest criticism cannot be disputed at all: in books as in theaters and concert halls a loud snore says more than a thousand of the most carefully considered words. If it doesn't work for you it doesn't work for you because Horace is right about matters of taste.

The fascinating fact is that one of the 2 people who have written negative reviews seems to intend to finish it. For him the immense tome (and how can Amazon have shrunk the paperback to a bit over 200 pages?) has to have something to recommend continuing. For myself it feels like a very long and very good novel. I've read both Edgar Johnson's and Acroyd's work twice, as well as all of Dickens's novels once. Acroyd replaced Johnson on my shelf. Johnson would be the better introduction for people who have only read one or two of the novels and for anyone in need of scholarly apparatus. For someone who downright loves Dickens I have to say that my initial reaction on finishing Acroyd was a sense of loss because I would never again be able to read it for the first time .

It is a unique biography in my experience, and as a truly great effort to understand a man in the context of his times stands directly next to the finest 20th century academic biography I have read: Peter Brown's Saint Augustine.

Although I find this book slightly more interesting than did the reviewer who likened it to Sominex, I have to confess that I am trying to finish it out of obstinacy and of my interest in Dicken's life. Ackroyd's writing style does indeed get on my nerves, particularly his effusions about Dickens' genius. Maybe he was a genius, but we don't have to be reminded 40 times a chapter! What bothered me the most were the chapters inserted here and there that were Ackroyd's fictional accounts of Dickens meeting his characters or other writers who did not live in his time. I found them corny and unbearable. I have never seen anything like this in other biographies, and I think that's a good thing. The only reason I am giving this book 2 stars is that it reflects an incredible amount of scholarship. But I have no idea why it is so well-regarded.

This is a book I should have read when it first came out in 1990, but did not buy it until the paperback edition came out. And then it sat on my bookshelf with my Oxford illustrated Dickens. Why didn't I get to it earlier? My best guess is that not only is reading all of Dickens a big chunk, this book is almost 1,100 pages long. I had so much else I wanted to read that getting into that much material as carefully as I wanted to read it caused me to put it off. Now that I have read the book and begun my perusal of all of Dickens rather than just that books with which I was already familiar show me what a mistake I have made. So, I urge you to not put off treating yourself to this biography or diving deeply into the writings of Charles Dickens.

Why do I like this biography? I think there are several basic approaches to telling the story of a life. Two that I do not like are the mere chronology of events from beginning to end and the other extreme that assimilates the author into the intellectual fashions of the present and does nothing to help us see the life and work in the context of the times in which it was created. This latter type is most often seen in academic biographies where English departments have become political advocacy and indoctrination programs and no longer deal with our language and its history in a serious or thoughtful way. Its easier to simply dismiss everyone who doesn't share your political philosophy and pretend that your being "right" also means you are of superior intellect and learning. For me, this is like travelling to a foreign land and then judging it against your own culture and finding its differences to be deficiencies.

This biography is of the kind I appreciate most. Ackroyd not only helps us see the life of Charles Dickens and how the author used his own life and times to create his art, but also the times, social settings, and evolving culture in which Dickens lived and worked. For me this has the benefit of travelling to a foreign land and by coming to appreciate its culture for what it is and how the people there express their lives in that culture you learn to see your own life and home culture with new depth. Our intellectual shorthand calls Dickens a Victorian, and of course he was in his maturity. However, his early life which formed much of what he was, was pre-Victorian. The London of his maturity was quite different than the London of his childhood and it is that earlier London that he used in most of his writing. I also found Ackroyd's discussion of the Charles' early family life and his relationship with his parents to be most helpful in seeing more deeply into Dickens' novels and the way he lived his life.

Ackroyd also provides seven little interludes that help us see his perspective on this biography. He admits his likely faults and where he might be pushing his ideas a bit too far. Still, I think this work is a fine accomplishment. As Ackroyd notes many times and as his friends noted, Dickens was an odd man. His friends loved him and if their relationship with him was broken off, more than a few grieved at the loss for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, he was so driven by his inner needs, his burning energy, his need to work hard, and to work out his life and world through his art that he was very hard on those around him. Not least his wife, Catherine. After she bore him ten children and suffered horribly from what we know as post-partum depression after each birth, he eventually separated from her. Yes, he set her up so she lived well, but she was terribly harmed by being pushed away. And he was, too. But he didn't see it that way. His relationship with Ellen Ternan is discussed in this book at length and Ackroyd takes the position that it was not sexual, but of the same deeply emotional attachment of similar nature to the one he had with Mary Hogarth (his wife's younger sister) who died at seventeen. But some have disagreed with this book's conclusions on this subject. I am willing to go along with the author, but for me the serious issue is less whom he took up with than those whom he abandoned. But that is my own view of life. Dickens was one of those driven men whose inner need to accomplish and work more deprive his family of a supportive father as his children grew. Frankly, Dickens was disappointed in most of his sons and was quite open about his favorites among his daughters. Very few of them had lives that worked out well. Of course, his presence was such a powerful force that the descendants to this day live in part to protect and perpetuate his legacy.

I also appreciated learning the way each of his works of fiction began, the way he worked through them, and how the public received them. Among the many things I did not know before reading this book I found Dickens' lifelong devotion to theater and the theatrical surprising to me and also quite helpful in understanding his work. Ackroyd also shows us how his works were constantly dramatized with or without Dickens' support and involvement. We also get a better sense of what melodrama meant in the context of that culture rather than our own perceptions of it. Ackroyd also guides us through the layers of artistic culture and how Dickens' popularity with the masses in some ways denied him acceptance in the more elite artistic circles. Still, Dickens knew what he was aiming for and his success was so great that these exclusive circles could hardly deny him. I also enjoyed learning how his works were serialized. While there were several different ways, in most cases the monthly installments were little books containing only that work and some advertisements (to increase profitability). While a few of his works were serialized in publications, particularly in Household Words and All the Year Round, most were handled as independent monthly serials. Oliver Twist and his Christmas books were issued as single volume publications, but that was not his usual way of publishing his works. As she worked his copyrights, he did print his works as bound novels and often revised them when issuing them in these editions.

Dickens was also an astute and hard driving business man. He valued his copyrights and worked them. Part of his hard feelings about America was the way his works were printed and sold here without any payments to him. Dickens was also very hard with his publishers at home. He would extract the lions share of the value of his work, which makes sense, and leave the publishers with enough to make them happy. However, when a publisher tried to push back that was often the end of their relationship. Dickens would not accept any slight or indignity; real or perceived.

While I knew that Dickens did do public readings of his works, I had no idea how extensive they were and how big a role they played in his later career. Nor did I realize how many of his works he developed for this type of public performance. Ackroyd does a fine job in showing us how carefully and even tentatively he developed the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes for public reading. Many of his family and friends told him not to do it because of the shock it would give his audiences. Once he did it and the shock was profound but popular, they urged him to stop because of the terrible physical and emotional strain it put on him in his frail condition. His children and friends believed that the strain of these readings shortened his life considerably.

The latter years of Dickens life are, frankly, sad. He only lived to be 58. How much of his health decline was caused by actual illness that he treated with medications such as laudanum and how much was caused by the treatments I do not know. But many of his friends and associates died by their late fifties, as well.

I think this is a very successful biography and provides wonderful information and insights for us, its readers. I not only recommend this biography to you, but encourage you to treat yourself to a more patient and deep reading of Dickens, who was, I believe, one of the great English writers. When we dismiss him, we cheat ourselves and blind ourselves to all his strengths, his wonderful humor, and indelible characters.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I was appalled to learn that Peter Ackroyd's fabulous biography, "Dickens" is out of print. After finishing this book, I feel that I know Charles Dickens better than I know many real people with whom I come into constant contact. The detail and sensitivity of this work have not been equalled by any other biography I have ever read. If you can find a copy of this book, then buy it, whether you are a Dickens fan or not! You will be glad you did.