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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An odd little book. While many biographies set out to tell the private life behind the public persona, Smiley, instead, attempts to do a psychological analysis on Dickens based on what we know of his private life in conjunction with what he was writing at any given time. The book is light on biographical detail, mentioning in passing people who surely played large roles in Dickens's life, and to whom other, more traditional biographers, would have surely devoted more time. But, if you've read the bulk of Dickens's work, it is interesting to see how his characters, themes, etc., correspond with what was going on in his personal life at any given time. Of course, all of it is so much speculation and pop psychology, and, therefore, a bit unfair to Dickens, himself, who isn't here to either cry foul or be stunned with self-revelation.

If you've never read much about Dickens's life, or have only read a couple of his novels, this is not the biography to start with. Smiley's book is much better suited to those who are already very familiar with Dickens, know his stories and characters, and who want to delve a little deeper into the novelist and what (may have) motivated him to write each novel the way he did.

A few years ago, on a rainy, damp February day straight out of Bleak House, I toured the Dickens Museum in London, housed in a home he occupied in his early years of marriage. A pedestal stand in one of the bedrooms contains an edition of All The Year Round, the periodical he founded, open to Dickens's essay condemning his wife as a poor mother, companion, and more. It's tough to read even today--the two other bedraggled tourists in the room and I had a lively discussion. How could a novelist known for wit and charm and human insight and redemption publicly humiliate anyone like that, let alone a woman who had borne him ten children?

Why bring the up? Because Smiley's biography is much less about places, dates and events and more about the intertwining of the man and his art. I've read just about all of his novels and a good many of his other works. Smiley places them in the context of his life events, drawing warranted but not overdone parallels between them. Her approach to his life story makes sense of the seeming contradictions among his public and private personas, the quality of his plotting and characters, the arenas, large and small, in which the stories play out, and more. Noting is excused, but much is explained, often with the right amount of sympathy toward this first modern celebrity.

At 200 pages it is very worth a read for anyone who loves Dickens but also, whether reading one of his tomes or about an episode in his life, occasionally wants to shout, "Dickens, what were you thinking!!!"

Chances are sometime in your life you've been introduced to Charles Dickens, weather it be from reading his novels or seeing his characters come to life on film and stage. One of his popular holiday books, A Christmas Carol is well known. I know I've watched on television quite a few film versions from the classic 1939 movie to The Muppets and to the 2009 remake. A Christmas Carol was the first novel I read by Charles Dickens. My seventh grade teacher tortured us with the complexity of Dickens. I say tortured because my young mind couldn't yet fathom the complexities of his novels. I didn't learn to appreciate Dickens until later in life. In fact I've even read a few of his novels for pleasure. That's right no grade was involved. But who is the man behind these novels? What inspired him? What drove him?
Charles Dickens: A Life by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jane Smiley is an interesting portrait of the man behind the novels. Instead of writing about Dickens from birth to death, Smiley concentrates on what influenced Dickens at the time of his writing. Charles Dickens was an eccentric character. He was a bit flamboyant, charismatic, very intelligent and socially conscious. He was also peculiar. His life and writing was influenced by many things that happened in his childhood, his personal views on marriage, and his social responsibilities. He was a hard working man. Always on the go. Charles Dickens was a rock star of the literary world. People loved and hated him. Jane Smiley brings out the intricacies of Charles Dickens life. She introduces a more private side of Dickens and how his choices influenced his novels.
I've read a few biographies about Charles Dickens but I really enjoyed this book. Jane Smiley did a fantastic job of showing different sides of the mysterious Dickens through his literary masterpieces. Charles Dickens: A Life is full of valuable information that will have you not only understanding the man behind the public figure but also his novels. I think this is definitely a book any Dickens fan would love to read.

Penguin Lives was a high-quality series of short biographies written by well-known authors who had some common ground with their subjects. I enjoyed Bobbie Ann Mason’s Elvis Presley and Tom Wicker’s George Herbert Walker Bush. Novelist Jane Smiley’s treatment of Charles Dickens is another excellent installment in the series. Although the Penguin Lives series is no longer being published, this book is still in print from Penguin in slightly different form under the title Charles Dickens: A Life.

Jane Smiley brings to her subject a novelist’s understanding of the processes involved in creating a body of work that resonates in its own time and then transcends that time to be appreciated more than a century later. Smiley delves into what is known of Dickens’s personal life, which is actually quite a bit, and comments on each of his novels and many of his shorter works, making Charles Dickens a satisfying, worthwhile blend of biography and literary criticism.

I’m a late-comer to Dickens, so some of my surprises may be well known to others more familiar with his work. I didn’t know about the complexity of Dickens’s family life, his lifelong success as a stage performer, and how he used his status as one of the first examples of celebrity to benefit himself and his causes.

Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens can be useful for those trying to find biographical or critical tidbits, but when read as a whole, it stands as a smart case study of a novelist explaining what we should appreciate about the craft of writing novels.