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Penguin Lives

Charles Dickens

jane smiley

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With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol . As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."

Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" ( The Boston Globe ) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.

Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2002
Series
Penguin Lives

This edition

Format
224 pages, Hardcover
Published
May 13, 2002 by Viking
ISBN
9780670030774
ASIN
0670030775
Language
English

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About the author

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jane smiley

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Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.

In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Manga_Otaku
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I really enjoyed this biography of Dickens by author Jane Smiley (whom I met once when I was in college. Neato.). I appreciated how Smiley's own insights as a novelist informed her commentary of his life, his personal writings, and his creative works. Her portrayal was thoughtful, balanced, generous, yet discerning. Dickens is a fascinating subject, and Smiley capably diagrams the scope of his impact on literature, on Victorian society and politics, on the novel, and on the profession of author. I knew he was celebrated, prolific, and brilliant, but I had less understanding of just what a phenomenon and trailblazer he was. I look forward to reading this again, and to delving into more of Dickens' works.
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ShojoNum1453
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Without having read anything by author Jane Smiley in the past, I was pleasantly impressed by the eloquence of this Pulitzer Prize winner’s writing style. Smiley easily draws the reader into the life and times of Charles Dickens, and allows the reader to not only get know the man, but also the inner workings of what inspired and influenced some of the greatest novel writing in history.

Among some of things brought to my attention by Smiley was the fact that Oliver Twist “was the first English novel to take a child as its protagonist”. “In some sense, Oliver Twist turned the world upside down and offered a new view of things to Dickens’s readers – life at the bottom of Victorian society, as seen through the eyes of a child”.

Charles Dickens: A Life is by no means a lengthy book. I was fascinated by the magnificence of the material contained in these pages. Not only does the reader get to examine the man, an examination of his writings is inevitable and insightful. The vast philosophical and psychological themes that Dickens sought to explore and capture in his works truly made him one of the most spectacular writers in literature. At 27 years old, Dickens was “…the most famous writer of his day”.

Another extraordinary detail Smiley brings to light is the fact that it was not until the time of Dickens that an author was able “…to support himself or herself through the sales of his or her own work, and in this Dickens was pioneer and exemplar”. “He differed from all of his contemporaries in that he represented no group, therefore he came to represent all”.

Smiley does exemplary work herself. Each page is abounding in the author’s expertise, intimacy and understanding of Dickens, giving this book credibility and readability. One great truth that Smiley touches upon is the significance of the published written word. “The new machinery of capitalistic publishing had carried his work far and wide, bringing a single man, a single voice, into a personal relationship with huge numbers of people of whom he had never met, and yet who felt intimate with him, because the novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness”.

For any person who loves literature, this quick study of Charles Dickens: A Life is one of the most affluent books I would highly recommend. “Charles Dickens was a phenomenon by any standard”.

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AKFarhan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I like the idea of a novelist telling the life of another novelist chiefly using his novels, but I think I might need to read another biography in addition to this one, since I'm missing some of the document-based evidence and historical grounding of a more traditional biography. Also, I get irritated by statements of "fact," such as, "the novel is first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds," a hopelessly reductive premise that I doubt a more historically-minded biographer would have the hubris to toss off as casually as Smiley does. (I have a hard time fitting Captain Ahab, to name just one, into this concept of the "foremost" concern of "the novel".) But at least so far this biography has been a quick and interesting read.

Having read further, I am happy to report that this bio does include some documentary evidence, including a few excerpts from letters. However, as one review I read points out, Smiley is VERY fond of using Freud. I have mixed feelings about Freud as applied to literature (it depends on how his theories are used), but I really find it especially unappealing when applied to the narrative of a person's life. Smiley seems to be "reading" Dickens as if he were a character in a novel. Modern psychology, while heavily influenced by Freud's ideas, has moved on, and in fact discredited many of his theories. I guess Smiley didn't get the memo.

I'm returning to this review to down-grade the stars. The more I think about this book, the more I hate it. In literary criticism, we've mostly turned away from using an author's life to "decode" his or her works. How much more problematic is it to analyze a life based on the works, then? And I keep thinking about her assertion that all characters are a part of the author. To diagnose an artist's internal life based on the figments of his or her imagination seems outright dangerous to me. If I can imagine terrible violence and suffering, what does this say about me? Nothing at all, I hope, unless I delight in it or try to pass it off as something admirable in itself. And you can't have it both ways: Smiley points to parallels in characters and real people Dickens knew (and some of whom he admitted to using as models). So are these characters based on real people, or are they fragments of Dickens own psyche? Because I don't think they can be both. Nor are these questions I find at all interesting. Now I really just want to read Ackroyd's biography. Too bad my Kindle is down for the moment.
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koitrl
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I didn't think I had any great interest in Charles Dickens (1812-1870), but novelist Jane Smiley's brief biography is pretty much irresistible. She interprets Dicken's life and work with a novelist's eye, and presents him as a Victorian superstar: indeed, his life and work prefigures 20th-century celebrities pretty closely. Smiley thinks Dickens and Shakespeare are the high points of English literature so far. Well, maybe so, but I don't think I'll be rushing on to reading Dickens' works....

The book bogs down a bit at times with detailed discussions of the novels. But after a break, I'd come back and go on to her writeup of the next book, and it all made sense, and was pretty interesting. As was his life: 10 kids in 16 years with his poor wife, and then he found her getting fat & dull. Wow. And the readings! Dickens was a serious amateur actor and showman, and found he had a real talent for reading selected bits of his own works to paying audiences, starting with "A Christmas Carol." These were a huge success, and very lucrative, even if the stress of performance may have driven him to an early grave.

So. You should pick up her book, even if Victorian novels aren't really your thing. Smiley has a very sharp eye, and is a fine writer. 4.5 stars.
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rude-boylive
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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4.75

I initially dismissed this book due to its slim size, thinking it couldn’t possibly hold anything new for me and that certainly it must be a potted biography (a great phrase I’ve seen my British friends use). But then remembering how I’d enjoyed Carol Shields’s take on Jane Austen in the same Penguin Lives series (and also realizing how nice the book would look on my shelf, sans dust cover), I ordered a copy. As with Shields’s Jane Austen, a fellow novelist has insights a biographer likely would not and I ended up enjoying this book immensely.

Smiley references the biography by John Forster, Dickens’ friend and first biographer, and the detailed biography by Peter Ackroyd, along with the Claire Tomalin biography of Ellen Ternan, always making clear what is speculation on anyone’s part and not of the historical record. (This was written before publication of the last volumes of Dickens’ letters and the more recent biography by Michael Slater, which I have yet to read.) Her insights range from the young Dickens feeling he was his parents’ lodger (à la little David Copperfield with the Micawbers); that the seemingly coincidental web of relationships within his novels are thematically intentional; that Dickens didn’t fit in, ever; that even in his later years he grew as a novelist (something he doesn’t always get credit for), including his female characterizations; and that in several, almost eerie, ways he presaged modernity.

For anyone who wants a biography of Dickens without having to wade through the in-depth details of lengthier ones, I can’t recommend this more highly. It also doesn’t hurt that I agree with Smiley on her assessments of the best of Dickens’ novels, along with her critique of flaws in others that are more widely praised.
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Thevsamovies
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I am not a fan of biography in general, but I especially tend to avoid biographies of writers (or other artists). I think a work of art should stand (or fall) on its own, regardless of the difficulties in the life of the artist. This little book is a literary biography--more about the novels than gossip about the writer--and suits me very well. A quote from the introduction:
"His novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels, and just as his novels were in part commentary on his life, so his actions, in part, grew out of the way that writing novels gave his feelings and thoughts specific being. To a novelist, his work is not his product, but his experience. Over time, his readers are further and further removed from the details of his life, but while they are reading his books, they are in his presence, experiencing his process of thought and imagination as it precipitates inchoate idea to particular word."
Well worth reading.
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KoubiiMi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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This is a very good and thorough biography of Dickens, considering that it's fairly short. I was hoping to read more about his childhood, but that part was pretty limited. He had quite an interesting life. The author has many good comments on his various works. I was a bit surprised that there was no index.
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Kaminari-Pein
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I found this look at the life and work of the iconic English novelist fascinating. I haven't read all of Dickens's books, so some of the discussion of his work was beyond me, but I appreciated knowing more about the character and personal life of the man who has so greatly influenced literature.
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