His Friends Were Appalled
Deborah Friedell: Dickens, 5 January 2012
The Life of Charles Dickens
by John Forster.
Cambridge, 1480 pp., £70, December 2011,978 1 108 03934 5 Show More
by John Forster.
Cambridge, 1480 pp., £70, December 2011,
Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist
by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.
Harvard, 389 pp., £20, October 2011,978 0 674 05003 7 Show More
by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.
Harvard, 389 pp., £20, October 2011,
Charles Dickens: A Life
by Claire Tomalin.
Viking, 527 pp., £30, October 2011,978 0 670 91767 9 Show More
by Claire Tomalin.
Viking, 527 pp., £30, October 2011,
“... Dickens dies at Gad’s Hill in Kent, as he does in every biography until now. ‘Suddenly he rose to his feet, saying he wished to go to London at once. Then he collapsed on the floor, muttering.’ Now Tomalin suggests, out of the blue, that he actually died at Nelly’s house in Peckham. For if he had, might not Nelly, to protect her reputation and ... ”