Author: John Mullan Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1408866811 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 449
Book Description
An essential guide to the fictional world of Charles Dickens. In thirteen entertaining and insightful essays, Mullan explores the literary machinations of Dickens's eccentric genius, from his delight in cliches to his rendering of smells and his outrageous use of coincidences
Author: Alexander Welsh Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300082036 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
When he wrote Hard Times - which can be considered an epilogue to the much longer Bleak House - Dickens was able to conceive a plot neither centered around a hero nor fueled by the kind of wish fulfillment that structure had implied.
Author: Norrie Epstein Publisher: Viking Adult ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 456
Book Description
You might have read him in class, but the Victorians read Charles Dickens like we watch Melrose Place, and The Friendly Dickens will show you why. It is the ultimate pop reference to the Dickensian world of shrouded sex and ostentatious death, a book that will have you running in delight to dust off your Dickens.Norrie Epstein--whose The Friendly Shakespeare was called by The New York Times "spirited, informative and provocative"--opens up Dickens's life and times in all its squalor and glory, including his rise to greatness and occasional lapses from grace. She considers his works, major and minor, in decided lively fashion, not just reading, but reading between the lines:* Was Oliver Twist's Fagin a pederast?* What made A Christmas Carol's Tiny Tim so darn tiny?* How many of Dickens's child characters met an untimely end? (Hint: plenty.)Full of humor, skepticism, and expert opinions, with eye- catching illustrations, plenty of quotes, and sidebars on nearly every page, you will quickly become a Dickens authority--even if you've never read a word.
Author: Lucinda Hawksley Publisher: Lyons Press ISBN: 9780762785216 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
As the daughter of the most famous writer of the time, Katey Dickens enjoyed a high profile in Victorian society. She pursued her love of painting, acted in her father’s plays, socialized with the Thackerays, and modeled for painter John Everett Millais. This riveting biography finally sheds light on her extraordinary life both as a Dickens and an artist. The turbulent family life in the Dickens household drove Katey to marry young. Her first husband was the chronically ailing Charlie Collins, brother of the famous author Wilkie Collins. After Charlie’s untimely demise, the widowed Katey fell in love and married the handsome Italian artist Carlo Perugini. Charles Dickens lovingly nicknamed Katey “Lucifer Box” because of her fiery temper. In many ways, Katey was ahead of her time; she refused to be eclipsed by her father and fought to establish herself as an artist. She became renowned as a portrait painter and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Katey lived to be almost ninety and her artistic prestige, which flourished during her lifetime, still persists to this day.
Author: Claire Tomalin Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141971452 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 633
Book Description
THE ACCLAIMED DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE OF THE GREATEST BRITISH WRITERS OF ALL TIME Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a journalist, a father of ten, a supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all, a great novelist. From unpromising beginnings sent to work a black factory age twelve, he rose to such social and literary heights that when he died, the world mourned. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family, he took up with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children. From the award-winning author Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius. If you loved Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, this book is invaluable reading. 'By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic account yet for the general reader' Amanda Craig, New Statesman
Author: Nick Hornby Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0593541839 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
“An ardent fan letter from Hornby that makes you want to re-read Great Expectations while listening to Sign o’ the Times.” —Vogue "This pairing -- two magnificent creatives, centuries and genres apart -- makes stunning sense in the hands of their wisest, wittiest fan." -- People From the bestselling author of Just Like You, High Fidelity, and Fever Pitch, a short, warm, and entertaining book about art, creativity, and the unlikely similarities between Victorian novelist Charles Dickens and modern American rock star Prince Every so often, a pairing comes along that seems completely unlikely—until it’s not. Peanut butter and jelly, Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, ducks and puppies, and now: Dickens and Prince. Equipped with a fan’s admiration and his trademark humor and wit, Nick Hornby invites us into his latest obsession: the cosmic link between two unlikely artists, geniuses in their own rights, spanning race, class, and centuries—each of whom electrified their different disciplines and whose legacy resounded far beyond their own time. When Prince’s 1987 record Sign o’ the Times was rereleased in 2020, the iconic album now came with dozens of songs that weren’t on the original— Prince was endlessly prolific, recording 102 songs in 1986 alone. In awe, Hornby began to wonder, Who else ever produced this much? Who else ever worked that way? He soon found his answer in Victorian novelist and social critic Charles Dickens, who died more than a hundred years before Prince began making music. Examining the two artists’ personal tragedies, social statuses, boundless productivity, and other parallels, both humorous and haunting, Hornby shows how these two unlikely men from different centuries “lit up the world.” In the process, he creates a lively, stimulating rumination on the creativity, flamboyance, discipline, and soul it takes to produce great art.
Author: A.N. Wilson Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062954962 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography A lively and insightful biographical celebration of the imaginative genius of Charles Dickens, published in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his death. Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his fifty-eight years when he died—an occasion marked by a crowded funeral at Westminster Abbey, despite his waking wishes for a small affair. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’s fiction drew from his life—a fact he acknowledged. Like Oliver Twist, Dickens suffered a wretched childhood, then grew up to become not only a respectable gentleman but an artist of prodigious popularity. Dickens knew firsthand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage. Going beyond standard narrative biography, A. N. Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens’s vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of nineteenth century readers—and why they continue to resonate today. The Mystery of Charles Dickens is illustrated with 30 black-and-white images.
Author: Juliet John Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0199257922 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
Dickens and Mass Culture shows that Dickens's unusual success in combining literary with wider popular appeal is directly related to his sense of himself as a mass cultural artist. It examines the ways in which his consciousness of a mass market for his work affected both his cultural vision and practice and his post-Victorian afterlives.
Author: John Mullan
Author: Alexander Welsh
Author: Charles Dickens
Author: Norrie Epstein
Author: Lucinda Hawksley
Author: Claire Tomalin
Author: Nick Hornby
Author: A.N. Wilson
Author: Juliet John
Author: Charles Dickens