Overview
The quintessential Victorian author, Charles Dickens not only created some of the most vivid characters in English classic literature, but he also lived his own life with a zest and drama that were novelistic in their intensity. In Simply Dickens, author Paul Schlicke explores the fascinating link between Dickens the writer and Dickens the person—a dynamic and driven social reformer who worked to improve the living conditions of the poor.
Description
Oliver Twist. A Christmas Carol. David Copperfield. Bleak House. A Tale of Two Cities. Great Expectations. The novels of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) read like a “Who’s Who” of canonical works. Yet, less well known is the fact that Dickens himself was something of a created character, a larger-than-life figure who lived through his art and pursued his many passions with a theatrical zeal that could have belonged to one of his famous protagonists.
Largely self-taught, with little formal education, Dickens was catapulted to fame at the age of 24 with the publication of The Pickwick Papers in 1836. For the next 30 years, he wrote a prodigious number of novels, short stories, essays and other works, while simultaneously campaigning for a variety of social reforms. As Simply Dickens colorfully describes, in life and in art, Dickens threw himself into everything he undertook—from taking on the personalities of his characters as he wrote, to pursuing such causes as children’s rights and universal education.
While some authors have depicted Dickens as a tormented soul or cruel misogynist who compromised his work by pandering to a wide audience, Simply Dickens convincingly shows him as a purposeful, supremely talented, and versatile personality, whose popular appeal was central to his achievement.
About the author
Paul Schlicke is the author of Dickens and Popular Entertainment and the editor of the Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens, and has served as president of the Dickens Society and the Dickens Fellowship, and as chairman of the trustees of the Charles Dickens Museum. Prior to his retirement in 2010, he taught English at the University of Aberdeen for 40 years.
About the series
Simply Charly's Great Lives Series offers brief, but authoritative introductions to the world's most influential people—scientists, artists, writers, economists, and other historical figures whose contributions have had a meaningful and enduring impact on our society. Each book, presented in an engaging, accessible and entertaining fashion, offers an illuminating look at their works, ideas and personal lives, and the legacies they left behind.
Series trailer
Reviews
"For the newcomer to Dickens, Schlicke more than meets the prerogative of the Great Lives Series to effect an authoritative encounter, at once 'engaging and accessible,' with this influential historical figure."
—Leslie S. Simon, Dickens Quarterly
"Dickens is presented in an accessible way meant to underscore key points and take account of his prolific literary output and the development of his craft."
—Publishers Weekly
"This hugely readable book by a distinguished Dickens scholar provides, in less than 100 pages, a remarkably comprehensive, authoritative and vividly written account of Dickens's astonishing life and career. Dr. Schlicke's primary focus is of course on Dickens as a supremely great novelist, and on the roots of his writing in his own personal experiences, but he gives detailed attention also to other aspects of Dickens' life and career such as his travels, editorial work, passion for the theatre, public readings and social activism."
—Michael Slater, Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck, past President of the International Dickens Fellowship, and former editor of its journal, The Dickensian
"Simply Dickens offers a concise account of the multiple lives of Charles Dickens, the author of more memorable characters with distinctive voices than any writer save Shakespeare. Meet the journalist, the philanthropist and social critic, the public speaker, the performer of readings from his own works, the actor and director of plays—they are all here jostling to keep company with the childhood and personal life of the man whose novels have secured his reputation and won readers throughout the world. Paul Schlicke presents this eminently accessible portrait in a series of brief chapters, expertly blending the contours of Dickens’s multivalent activities with commentary on his development as a novelist, an author who grows quickly beyond the literary traditions he inherited to develop the unique and powerful prose that defines his major works."
—David Paroissien, Editor of Dickens Quarterly
"Paul Schlicke presents us with Simply Dickens in all his fascinating complexity. He succeeds in providing readers with a clear outline of the events in Dickens’s life, with a shrewd and well-judged critical assessment of his works, including some of the less well-known and less popular, novels and stories. His survey embraces Dickens’s journalism, his passion for theatre and performance, his relationship with the age in which he lived and about which he delivered, at times, some severe judgements. The development of Dickens’s art is traced through to the works of his maturity, pointing to the way in which his themes and attitudes crystallised and had a clear impact on the honing of his craft as the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century. Alongside this, there emerges a figure who, as Paul Schlicke points out towards the end of this very valuable short study, had an enormous ‘appetite’ for life and living."
—Dr. Tony Williams, President of The Dickens Fellowship and Associate Editor of The Dickensian
“This is one of the best short introductions to Dickens's life and work that I know. Paul Schlicke integrates the life of this extraordinary man with his fiction, journalism and public readings in a very engaging and lively narrative. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to the widest range of readers.”
—Malcolm Andrews, Emeritus Professor Victorian & Visual Arts, University of Kent, Editor of The Dickensian
Genre:
NonfictionSubgenre:
Biography, Literary criticismLanguage:
EnglishISBN (eBook):
978-1-943657-02-5ISBN (Print):
978-1-943657-06-3Publisher:
Simply CharlyPublish-Date:
May 9, 2016Edition Number:
1Pages:
97Available for sale on
