Dickens: Things You Might Not Know

Did you know A Christmas Carol was just the first of many Christmas books by Dickens? And whilst their quality was not as good as A Christmas Carol, they all made more money for him. This was because his publishers chose not to invest as much in the quality and wrapping of the later books, which Dickens had insisted upon for the first.

I was surprised how little I knew about Dickens before I read the remarkable biography by Claire Tomalin recently. He was more complex than I’d realised. He...