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Charles Dickens in Love
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Charles Dickens' life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. When Charles Dickens died in 1870, he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world - the preeminent Victorian celebrity, universally mourned as both a noble spirit and the greatest of novelists. Yet, the first person named in his will was an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan - only a handful of people had any idea who she was. Of his romance with Ellen, Dickens had written, "it belongs to my life and probably will only die out of the same with the proprietor," and so it was. She remained the most important person in his life until his death. She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who "pervaded every chink and crevice" of his mind for three years, Maria Beadnell. When she eventually jilted him he vowed that "I never can love any human creature but yourself." A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life. "I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed," he declared, and he died over thirty years later still wearing her ring. Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love.
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Reviews for Charles Dickens in Love
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have long been in love with the work of Charles Dickens and the informal glimpses into his thoughts through correspondence framed in context with this impeccably researched and presented book, have rekindled that flame anew. This is truly a must-read book for Dickens fans.
In the chosen letters you find the voice of the author, which may differ greatly from the work you have read. Whether demanding or morose, with flights of fancy and fits of pique: all moments in his life, however fleeting and momentary.
This book does all of that and more, making my feet itch to travel to Niagara Falls and see it as he did, or find a vantage point in the mountains, to commune with memories and thoughts. What emerges in this book is the great dichotomy that was Dickens. A man obsessed with neatness and order, a proponent of orderliness in his home and person, with a cutthroat business sense fueled by great ambition. Every conversation, every event was fodder for his imagination, facile enough to see three sides of a single coin and represent each viewpoint fully and succinctly.
I was provided an eBook copy through NetGalley from Open Road Integrated Media for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review and all conclusions are my own responsibility.
Book preview
Charles Dickens in Love - Robert Garnett
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