Chatty and readable with a few intriguing opinions. But there is no original research and at least one very careless factual error about Charlotte Bronte’s cause of death.

You've got to love the Penguin quickies. In this one Jane Smiley makes a few too many broad generalizations: "A novel is first and foremost blah blah blah" and "All great novelists are blah blah blah" that were not actually that enlightening. But I liked learning how Dickens would save the dresses that certain ladies were wearing the first time he met them. Kinky!

Only 3 stars because Smiley mistakenly says Charlotte Bronte died in childbirth.

There's a real art to writing a good biography. It takes great skill to choose how to remake the character you're writing about including how much external fact and internal perception you want to draw out, and how to contour the story of a entire life with all its tedium and complexity. Smiley does this beautifully in this relatively small biography of a great big man: Charles Dickens: A Life. Though many other biographies have been written of Dickens, Smiley's remains unique for a number of reasons. The first is that she has done her scholarship and is well versed, not only in the body of Dickens scholarship that precedes hers, but also and primarily, in her deep understanding of Dickens' work. The biography is drawn around Dickens' novels, which become the timeline for his life. This makes for fascinating reading, coupling literary criticism with a deep analysis of the relationship between life and art. In particular, the book explores the maturation of Dickens' vision and maps the development of his work to the events in his life, attempting to find answers to the question of who Dickens was, through the material he left us.

The book begins with The Pickwick Papers, which Dickens published at twenty-four years of age, converting his serialisation of Sketches by Box into the novel we know today. At this point in Dickens' life, he's already famous, not only for his work, but for his flamboyant dress, his acting ability, his charm, and his good looks. The success of his first novel set the scene for his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, and the growing relationship between Dickens and his young sister in law Mary, both critical events in Dickens' life and in the novels he was yet to write. As one might expect from a master novelist like Jane Smiley, the ensuing portrait of Dickens is a rich one, full of the complexities of his unusual character while linking, always, the personal microcosm of Dickens the man with the broader macrocosm of the stories he produced:

He veered between overflowing vitality and prostration in a manner that seems to the modern sensibility almost hysterical. Every stimulus produced an enormous reaction, to the point that right around this period in Dickens's life, it was rumored that he was mad. Certainly, he was frenzied, and certain, in the grips of inspiration, he had only tenuous control over his facial expressions and his tongue. His daughter Kate as an adult recalled watching Dickens at work; the characters and their voices seemed to possess him--he spoke their lines and acted out their parts as he wrong them down, often looking into a mirror. (23-24)

Throughout Smiley's Charles Dickens, the prose remains light and the story fast paced, as we move through the defining points in Dickens' life such as the death of Mary Hogarth or his first trip to the US. In those two examples we're shown quite clearly the relationship between these avents and, for example, the creation of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, or the growing social reform themes that are explored in Martin Chuzzlewit.

One almost gets a sense that Smiley's exploration of Dickens is intimate because of the way in which she views him as a colleague. Smiley's Dickens is a man who, despite his flaws, is always immersed in the role of creating larger meaning from the world around him, twisting the public pressure and personal issues that surrounds his life into "repeated attempts to rationalize the world" (175). There is always an 'insiders' perspective to the portrait:

Other thinkers, not novelists, had other ideas about the significance of individuals and individualism, but Dickens's chosen form saddled him with a philosophical question he tried ardently to solve, both srtisticallya nd personally, for hsi entire life. The controversies that arise about Dickens's real political views, in my opinion, arise primarily from the fact that a novelist always, and increasingly, sees teh trees rather than the forest, and is naturally unsympathetic to a collective solution, while always more or less in favor of a connective solution. (60)

As the book progresses Smiley explores the notion of the "Dickensian": Dickens' use of language, his distinctive and often exaggerated characters, and his progression from a focus on social themes to a focus on personal themes, moving, as Smiley so beautifully puts it, "precisely from particular to particular". Though Smiley's Charles Dickens isn't a large book, it brings to it such a deep and thoughtful scholarship, not so much as historian, but as reader and fellow writer, that it seems comprehensive. The relationships in Dickens' life from Ellen Ternan who later becomes more of a companion than his estranged wife Catherine, to his famous friends George Dolby, William Thackery, and Wilkie Collins all provide subtle perspective, as we witness their responses to Dickens' choices through his successes and failures. We observe, especially in Dickens' later years, his seriousness about theatre, and the way in which he reads and shares his work with the public. Smiley's Charles Dickens is about more than one man, even a man as grand as Charles Dickens. It's also about the creative process and what it means to map the "borderline where the inner world and the outer world meet". Certainly that focus is what makes this version of Charles Dickens a uniquely perceptive and powerful one.

I wish it came with a spoiler alert, because it basically tells you the plot and conclusion of every single one of his books, which I’ve yet to cover all the way. I felt that her commentary was very subjective, even going so far as to give her opinion, “this is my favorite book”, and I felt like she was judging his life based on her view on the world, which to me is strange for a biography. Also, I felt like the paragraphs were quite long and would have used more breaks—minor, but I am just being honest.

I'm often drawn to biography, but just as often put off by 500-page volumes containing all the details and evidence that the life of someone like Dickens would require. For me, this slim book is perfect: it captures the broad strokes of the man's life - his 9 children, his acting career, his acrimonious divorce, his fame, the circumstances of his death - without burying me in the everyday minutiae I don't care about. Even better, there is sharp focus on his writing life. Smiley underscores why his career as a novelist was important (in many ways what we think of as the modern novel is within the large boundaries that Dickens set) without losing sight of his limitations.

I really enjoyed this approach to a biography. Instead of a giant tome detailing every event from cradle to grave, Smiley approaches Dickens' life mostly through his books. She makes the case that his plots and characters over time give us insight into events in his private life - even those that are undocumented. I've read a fair bit of Dickens, but not recently. Smiley speaks of his characters as familiar friends, whereas they are more acquaintances of mine. I fear some of the ideas about the characters were lost on me, but I love her way of expressing thoughts and ideas.

This was a terrific recommendation by my friend Dana. I would like to "ditto" Dana's review because it is a perfect review of Smiley's book and echo my same sentiments. I have always loved Dickens and realized very quickly that I hardly knew anything about him. Dickens has became a much more dynamic and real person to me and I am motivated now, to take on some of his more difficult novels, like Bleak House, as well as other novels less familiar to me like Little Dorrit. This was a quick read, and I found myself wanting to keep reading to learn how his life unfolded. It is not the happiest ending, but I am confident Dickens lived a vigorous and fulfilling life in spite of his disappointments. I wish Smiley had added footnotes because sometimes I wanted to have tangible proof for her opinion. However, for the most part I trusted her and felt she gave a generally unbiased point of view. Overall a Smiley gives a terrific snippet of Dickens' life and how it intertwined with the characters and themes of his stories.

Totally readable, user-friendly account of Dickens' life. Read it so I could get a better handle on teaching him, but it's a fascinating life to read about regardless. Did you know he walked 20 to 30 miles a day? That his public readings basically made him the equivalent of an E! celebrity because of which, since the job of PR Manager hadn't yet been created, Dickens routinely made headlines? Also, I like the way Smiley writes about literature.

A mix between literary criticism and biography. I would have gotten a lot more out of this book if I had read more Dickens, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I might look for more books from the Penguin Lives series.

Although I’ve seen a couple of biographies of Dickens on video, I think this is the first one I’ve ever read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Smiley analyzes not just his personal life, but his stories, as well. She relates how people and circumstances in his personal life, came through in his stories. I already knew a lot about his family and personal life, but I loved the way Smiley wrote about them and about his characters. I’m not sure I would have liked the man at all, but his characters are among the greatest ever written. Every one of them is brilliant to me. They can bring me to tears or make me laugh out loud. I found this biography short, easy to read and very entertaining.

A biography of Dickens that focuses heavily on how his life influenced the writing of each of his books. Clear and concise (and not terribly lengthy), it's a great place to start for anyone interested in Dickens, or for anyone who has enjoyed his books and wants to start diving into his life.