Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Charles Dickens

A Life

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
When Charles Dickens died in 1870, The Times of London successfully campaigned for his burial in Westminster Abbey, the final resting place of England's kings and heroes. Thousands flocked to mourn the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England. His books had made them laugh, shown them the squalor and greed of English life, and also the power of personal virtue and the strength of ordinary people. In his last years Dickens drew adoring crowds to his public appearances, had met presidents and princes, and had amassed a fortune.
Like a hero from his novels, Dickens trod a hard path to greatness. Born into a modest middle-class family, his young life was overturned when his profligate father was sent to debtors' prison and Dickens was forced into harsh and humiliating factory work. Yet through these early setbacks he developed his remarkable eye for all that was absurd, tragic, and redemptive in London life. He set out to succeed, and with extraordinary speed and energy made himself into the greatest English novelist of the century.
Years later Dickens's daughter wrote to the author George Bernard Shaw, "If you could make the public understand that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch, you would greatly oblige me." Seen as the public champion of household harmony, Dickens tore his own life apart, betraying, deceiving, and breaking with friends and family while he pursued an obsessive love affair.
Charles Dickens: A Life gives full measure to Dickens's heroic stature—his huge virtues both as a writer and as a human being— while observing his failings in both respects with an unblinking eye. Renowned literary biographer Claire Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickens's own pen, a comedy that turns to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great—his indomitable energy, boldness, imagination, and showmanship—finally destroyed him. The man who emerges is one of extraordinary contradictions, whose vices and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A biography of a major literary figure stuffed full of literary excerpts could have proved a daunting audiobook. However, Claire Tomalin's clear and brutally honest portrayal combined with Alex Jennings's smooth voice and intelligent, engaging style results in a superb listening experience. Charles Dickens was a complicated man. He had an astonishing work ethic, helped poor friends and children, set up a home for prostitutes, and skewered the grasping and dishonest. Yet he was also a terrible husband and father, wished his brother were dead, and really couldn't write female characters. Jennings is a master at distinguishing the narrative of Dickens's life story from the primary sources of letters, speeches, and novels by softening his voice subtly but clearly. Jennings also produces credible American accents for Dickens's trips to the U.S. in this outstanding performance. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 24, 2012
      Tomalin’s sprawling biography of one of history’s most revered literary figures—with its dizzying cast of characters and mixture of literary criticism, detailed historical record keeping, psychological insight, and human drama—would present a challenge to any audiobook narrator. Thankfully Alex Jennings is more than up to the task, successfully rendering the complicated inner struggles that shaped the temperament and life of Charles Dickens. Jennings also provides spot-on dialects and accents, particularly in sections of the book that detail Dickens’s travels to the United States and dealings with his American contemporaries. Keeping pace with this audio edition requires active listening, but Jennings’s narration is more than rewarding. A Penguin hardcover.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 8, 2011
      “veryone finds their own version of Charles Dickens ,” concludes award-winning British biographer Tomalin: Dickens the mesmerist, amateur thespian, political radical, protector of prostitutes, benefactor of orphans, restless walker—all emerge from the welter of information about the writer’s domestic arrangements, business dealings, childhood experiences, illnesses, and travels. Bolstered by citations from correspondence with and about Dickens, Tomalin’s portrait brings shadows and depth to the great Victorian novelist’s complex personality. Tomalin (Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self) displays her deep scholarship in reviewing, for instance, the debate about Dickens’s relations with Nelly Ternan, concluding that the balance of evidence is that they were lovers. She also highlights the contrasts between his charitable actions toward strangers and his “casting off” of several relatives from father to brothers to sons, who kept importuning him for money: “Once Dickens had drawn a line he was pitiless.” By the end of this biography, readers unfamiliar with Dickens will come away with a new understanding of his driven personality and his impact on literature and 19th-century political and social issues. Tomalin provides her usual rich, penetrating portrait; one can say of her book what she says of Dickens’s picture of 19th -century England: it’s “crackling, full of truth and life, with his laughter, horror and indignation.” Illus.; maps.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading