charles dickens a life by claire tomalin

It was brilliant at showing all the contradictions in Dickens, a man maybe too brilliant to ever reach a healthy balance in every thing, and find real emotional happiness. This 3rd part of the book was totally unexpected for me. He stopped lots of his generous contributions and supports of friends. He lived in very poor London areas, with a father who would almost constantly be in debt, and that makes the background of most of his characters.Īs soon as he earned a living, Dickens became very generous at helping his family and friends, and many poor people at large, including a home he founded and financed for prostitutes.ĭickens had an incredible energy: he needed to move and walked miles and miles to find his inspiration, while working at many things at the same time.Īll this was rather well until his midlife crisis, when he suddenly asked divorce and said he did not like his children, 10 of them. Both are anyway extremely connected.Įven as a very young boy, Dickens had a great sense of observation, and would even take notes of things he saw around him. This biography was fascinating: Tomalin does a great job at mixing Dickens’s life events and literary creations, not hesitating on delving into each novel, each character, to show all the links between his life and his writing. The latest work of his I read, more accurately listened to, was A Tale of Two Cities, a few years ago. For this wonderful literary occasion, I joined 2 challenges, and read this brand new fantastic biography.

On February 7, 2012, we will be celebrating Dickens’ 200th birthday (1812-1870).

For honest reading statistics, I give the number of pages I read, that’s why my page number count is usually not the official one. Pages 418-527 are notes, acknowledgements, bibliography and index.

The text itself stops at page 417, and this is mostly what I read: I only read a couple of notes. I need first to explain the discrepancy between the official page numbers of this book, Goodreads says 527 pages (and I have no idea why amazon says 576 pages, for the exact same book I have here) and my page count of only 417. I read this book for the following Challenges:

Charles dickens a life by claire tomalin