Charles Dickens

Penguin Lives

by Jane Smiley

With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol . As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."

Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" ( The Boston Globe ) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.

Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Classics, History, Biography Memoir, Literary Criticism, Ebooks

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.

In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75

I initially dismissed this book due to its slim size, thinking it couldn’t possibly hold anything new for me and that certainly it must be a potted biography (a great phrase I’ve seen my British friends use). But then remembering how I’d enjoyed Carol Shields’s take on Jane Austen in the same Penguin Lives series (and also realizing how nice the book would look on my shelf, sans dust cover), I ordered a copy. As with Shields’s Jane Austen, a fellow novelist has insights a biographer likely would not and I ended up enjoying this book immensely.

Smiley references the biography by John Forster, Dickens’ friend and first biographer, and the detailed biography by Peter Ackroyd, along with the Claire Tomalin biography of Ellen Ternan, always making clear what is speculation on anyone’s part and not of the historical record. (This was written before publication of the last volumes of Dickens’ letters and the more recent biography by Michael Slater, which I have yet to read.) Her insights range from the young Dickens feeling he was his parents’ lodger (à la little David Copperfield with the Micawbers); that the seemingly coincidental web of relationships within his novels are thematically intentional; that Dickens didn’t fit in, ever; that even in his later years he grew as a novelist (something he doesn’t always get credit for), including his female characterizations; and that in several, almost eerie, ways he presaged modernity.

For anyone who wants a biography of Dickens without having to wade through the in-depth details of lengthier ones, I can’t recommend this more highly. It also doesn’t hurt that I agree with Smiley on her assessments of the best of Dickens’ novels, along with her critique of flaws in others that are more widely praised.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has no footnotes. It's only 200 pages long. If you read it in bed and nod off, it won't kill you when it falls on your chest (unlike, say, Bleak House). It reads like an informal conversation with a very smart and well-read friend whose judgment you trust.

I was ripe for this biography after Masterpiece's Tales of Charles Dickens series. I loved watching Little Dorrit, but I felt I understood it better after reading Jane Smiley's analysis of the women in Dickens' life: his resentment of his mother--who thrust him into employment at the age of 12 to help support the family; his disgust at the beautiful young woman who obsessed him as a young man and then became a Flora Finching figure in middle age; his irritation with his wife--who seemed always to be pregnant with one of their ten children; even his ultimate disenchantment with the 18-year-old actress who was the proximate cause of his divorce.

I saw Amy Dorrit in a different light, as an idealized woman who wasn't cold and judgmental like Mrs. Clennam or unobtainable like Estella or ridiculous like Flora or emotionally dead like Lady Dedlock. No wonder Amy and Esther Summerson and Lucie Manette turn up so regularly: they are women as Dickens wished they could be, held in contrast to the real women he knew who always disappointed. (His male friends fared much better, although his sons did not.)

This book is an insightful rendering of a prolific and passionate genius. Smiley enriched my appreciation of him and made me want to return to his novels.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Jane Smiley offers brevity and astute analysis in this biography of Charles Dickens from the Penguin Lives series. Its brevity (212 pages) will relieve apprehensive readers familiar with Dickens's hefty novels (DAVID COPPERFIELD runs over 800 pages). Her analysis is even more welcome. It pairs themes in his books with concurrent events in his life. What emerges is a conflicted man whose contradictions are not easily reconciled.

Smiley is critical of the lax usage of the adjective “Dickensian.” She argues that Dickens was constantly rethinking old themes and evolving throughout his long career. ”Dickens's works are often seen to be all of a piece — he did a certain sort of thing, or he employed a certain sort of technique, from the beginning to the end of his career. He was Dickensy. In fact, though, Dickens's novels, stories, plans and letters show that his ideas and his worldview were dynamic, not static....His novels propose different solutions to the dilemma of incompatibility while his analysis of the dilemma gets more and more complex and refined.” (p.204)

The most prominent theme of course is his concern with social ills. The transformation of England from a rural to an urban society magnified poverty, crime, lack of sanitation, housing shortages and class disparity. The workhouse in OLIVER TWIST and debtor's prison in DAVID COPPERFIELD are examples of society's disposal of those afflicted. Respectability is another theme. Dickens was secretive about his own unrespectable origins and the painful memories of his early life. His adulthood looks like a relentless pursuit of the ideal of Victorian respectability. He married young. Catherine Hogarth was 21 and Charles Dickens was 24 when they married in 1836. Their first child was born the following year and the family quickly expanded to ten children in close succession.

Dickens was a reformer, not a revolutionary. He believed in volunteerism and charitable organizations rather than a government managed social safety net. He was a tireless contributor and fundraiser for charitable causes. With Angela Burdett-Coutts, a wealthy banking heiress, he worked to improve Urania College, one of the “ragged schools” that existed to warehouse unwanted children. He was also an active supporter of a home for reformed prostitutes. In DAVID COPPERFIELD Dickens focuses his critique on individuals rather than institutions. The Micawbers end up in debtor's prison as much due to Mr. Micawber's spendthrift ways as his inability to find employment. The Victorian conception of marriage seems bad only because of the Murdstones's joyless self-righteousness and rigid regimentation. Salem House is a poor excuse for a school primarily because of Mr. Creakle. He pays the masters poorly, he fires Mr. Mill when learning of his mother's “disgraceful” poverty, he humiliates Traddles relentlessly, toadies to Steerforth, and disciplines the students with beatings.

Smiley points to the Crimean War (1853-1856) as a turning point in Dickens's optimism. LITTLE DORRIT (1857) was initially titled “Nobody's Fault,” and Smiley views it both as an attack on middle-class values and a rebuke of an incompetent, indifferent and irresponsible ruling class. ”Dickens's vision of Little Dorrit is not only an exceptionally dark view of human nature; it is specifically a dark view of British society and of the effects of British social and economic structure upon British citizens.” (p.125)

Dickens's attitude toward respectability was likewise ambivalent. The marital bliss promised by Victorian conventionality failed to materialize. Catherine had a loving, sedate temperament and was both compliant and fruitful. Dickens wanted more. Intellectual companionship? Artistic accomplishment? Smiley characterizes it as an oscillation between virginal and maternal figures. In DAVID COPPERFIELD the conflict is played out in the contrast between Dora and Agnes. In life, his ambivalence was played out in a succession of experiments in female relationships: An expanded family circle which included Catherine's younger sister Georgina who was only 17 when she died a year after his marriage to Catherine; a brief infatuation with 18 year old Christiana Weller, a gifted pianist, in 1844; a dabbling in hypnosis with a Madame de la Rue the following year, a meeting in 1855 with an old flame, Maria Beadnell Winter; and finally, his liaison with the 18 year old actress Ellen Ternan in 1857. The institution of marriage, at least in its Victorian form, was never suitable to Dickens's temperament. ”He expected absolute order and meticulous cleanliness, quiet when he was working, and boisterous fun, with many visitors when he was ready for it. He was, in short, something of a domestic tyrant, whose sensitivity to the needs of his wife (toward whom he still seems to have felt considerable affection at this point), and children (in whose lives he always interfered) was minimal.” (p.24) In true Victorian fashion, he repressed his dissatisfaction, at least in the beginning, and filled his time with long solitary walks, extensive travel, evenings out socializing, and of course his editing and writing.

As a combination of artist, agent and impressario, Dickens was ill-suited for Victorian conventionality. His flamboyant attire was criticized as déclassé. His search for interesting names took him through cemetaries. His curiosity led him through tenements and red-light districts. He had a sharp ear for mimicry and great dramatic talent, which he applied in public readings that elevated him from author to celebrity and forged an energizing collaborative connection with his audience more comparable to the performance of a stand-up comedian than an author on book tour. Friends urged him to desist from these performances on the grounds that they were undignified. Birth, temperament and talent condemned him to an outsider status, the very vantage point that honed his understanding of class differences and human nature.

Dickens was creatively active between 1833 when his first sketch, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” was published and his death in 1870 while he was working on the novel EDWIN DROOD. Smiley views his career as a bridge between the romanticism of Sir Walter Scott (one of Dickens's famorite authors) and later Victorian authors. It is easy to forget that he began his career four years before Victoria was crowned. Smiley notes that there was a big difference between the early and later Victorian years.

Inevitably, readers and critics are drawn to view Dickens's work in a historical context. Yet, Smiley highlights a modern sense of Dickens. He was outraged to learn that his works were being freely printed in America without payment of any royalty to him. Despite his success he always harbored a sense of financial insecurity. Through DAVID COPPERFIELD his observations of Parliament could have been written today: ”Night after night, I record predictions that never came to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify.” (p.606 of DAVID COPPERFIELD) The creepiness of characters like Uriah Heep continues to feed a psychological longing for memorable villains. The lively humor in Dickens's prose continues to entertain and delight readers today.

I came to this book familiar in detail only with DAVID COPPERFIELD, as obvious from the examples I have cited. Smiley covers the full spectrum of Dickens's work,making this a book with appeal to both the novice and the knowledgeable reader.

[Poiema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Smiley manages to gives us a "big view" of Dickens' huge contribution to literature, while also probing more personal incidents in his life. I felt like her analysis and viewpoint were greatly enhanced by her own experience as a novelist. She helps the reader understand the emotional and psychological changes that occur internally as a writer lives and breathes his vision into the pages of his creation. The writing can be cathartic, a sort of unburdening of the soul, perhaps even a psychological exercise in addressing latent trauma. But the work does not leave the creator unchanged.

Dickens' acting abilities were entirely intertwined with his writing, and his hugely successful readings combined his talents perfectly. One of his daughters noted that she observed her father, during a writing session, making weird faces in the mirror as he experimented with phrases and descriptions of characters and their emotions. His acting out enhanced his descriptive abilities.

I felt Smiley balanced the winsome vs. the tortured aspects of Dickens' complex nature quite well. We see his playfulness, warmth, joviality contrasting greatly with his deep discontent--- which sullied his domestic life.It did not cause him to be entirely unlikable, just human.

I enjoyed the references to the literary friendships that Dickens engaged in, with significant authors such as Wilkie Collins and Thackeray. He seemed not to get bogged down by critics or petty jealousy.

Dickens was one of the first to be an international celebrity, forging new inroads for authors in the post industrial world. His serial offerings in periodicals changed the way the public consumed stories. His dramatic readings were a sensation.

Yet, the success did not extend to his home life and he experienced the sorrow of divorce, disappointment with his children, and a cloaked affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter. This was such a contrast to the warm, domestic scenes he portrayed in his books. It marks the difference between what is envisioned and what is actually attained.

I plan to read more about Dickens, including _My Father As I Recall Him_, by his daughter Mamie Dickens, and his published letters, which have now been made available on Kindle. Dickens is endlessly fascinating, and knowing some of his life story helps one to understand how he projected bits of his acquaintances' quirks into his fictional characters. It's fascinating to unravel the threads that intertwine his private life with his fictional characters.Thank you, Jane Smiley, for this valuable contribution to my understanding of Dickens and his world.

[Gary Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penguin Lives was a high-quality series of short biographies written by well-known authors who had some common ground with their subjects. I enjoyed Bobbie Ann Mason’s Elvis Presley and Tom Wicker’s George Herbert Walker Bush. Novelist Jane Smiley’s treatment of Charles Dickens is another excellent installment in the series. Although the Penguin Lives series is no longer being published, this book is still in print from Penguin in slightly different form under the title Charles Dickens: A Life.

Jane Smiley brings to her subject a novelist’s understanding of the processes involved in creating a body of work that resonates in its own time and then transcends that time to be appreciated more than a century later. Smiley delves into what is known of Dickens’s personal life, which is actually quite a bit, and comments on each of his novels and many of his shorter works, making Charles Dickens a satisfying, worthwhile blend of biography and literary criticism.

I’m a late-comer to Dickens, so some of my surprises may be well known to others more familiar with his work. I didn’t know about the complexity of Dickens’s family life, his lifelong success as a stage performer, and how he used his status as one of the first examples of celebrity to benefit himself and his causes.

Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens can be useful for those trying to find biographical or critical tidbits, but when read as a whole, it stands as a smart case study of a novelist explaining what we should appreciate about the craft of writing novels.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2019, while assembling a literary collage on the greatest novelists of all time, I found myself reaching again and again for Jane Smiley’s Charles Dickens—a slender yet deeply insightful volume from the Penguin Lives series that managed to distill a whole universe of one man’s life and legacy. It became not just a guidebook but a companion text—lucid, affectionate, and intellectually sharp.

What makes Smiley’s take on Dickens so compelling is its elegant compression. Within barely 200 pages, she not only traces the arc of Dickens’s personal and professional life, but also places his works in dialogue with his era, his obsessions, and his contradictions. She doesn't try to exhaustively annotate each novel—thankfully—but rather gives readers a psychological and thematic map, allowing us to see how Dickens evolved, both as a writer and as a man shadowed by performance, trauma, and an insatiable drive for productivity.

Smiley—herself a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist—brings a novelist’s empathy to her subject. She sees Dickens not just as a literary titan but as a working artist, anxious, brilliant, competitive, and hungry for love and approval. From his painful childhood in the blacking factory to his public readings that thrilled and exhausted him, from the idealisation of domestic femininity to his eventual split from Catherine Dickens—Smiley paints a portrait of genius without mythologising him.

One of the most helpful aspects of the book is how she groups the novels—not simply chronologically, but in waves of thematic or creative energy. She examines early picaresque works like Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist as extensions of social comedy and theatricality; she moves into the darker psychological terrain of David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorrit; and ends with the unfinished yet tantalisingly modern The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In each case, she balances literary critique with contextual reading, keeping both the prose and the pace remarkably fresh.

Smiley is especially incisive when writing about Dickens’s genius with character. She notes how his secondary figures often outshine his protagonists, how the grotesque and the comic were central to his moral vision, and how performance—on the page and in life—was both a source of energy and eventual exhaustion. Her commentary on Dickens’s theatricality—his use of voices, the physicality of his language, and his instinct for the dramatic—is among the best I've read outside of more academic criticism.

Most importantly, the book helped me reframe Dickens not as a moralist or a Victorian "do-gooder," but as a relentless observer—someone whose sense of injustice came not just from ideology but from lived experience and visceral empathy. Smiley doesn’t flinch from his flaws—his often reductive portrayal of women, his harsh treatment of family—but neither does she reduce him to them.

For my 2019 collage, Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley became the emotional and intellectual linchpin—a book that allowed me to see Dickens whole. Not as a museum statue, but as a man whose pen raced faster than his century could follow, whose novels still pulse with comic sorrow and luminous rage.

If you want to understand Dickens quickly, honestly, and with just the right dash of admiration—Smiley’s book is the one to reach for. It doesn’t shout. It listens, reflects, and ultimately, reveals.

[Janice · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the idea of a novelist telling the life of another novelist chiefly using his novels, but I think I might need to read another biography in addition to this one, since I'm missing some of the document-based evidence and historical grounding of a more traditional biography. Also, I get irritated by statements of "fact," such as, "the novel is first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds," a hopelessly reductive premise that I doubt a more historically-minded biographer would have the hubris to toss off as casually as Smiley does. (I have a hard time fitting Captain Ahab, to name just one, into this concept of the "foremost" concern of "the novel".) But at least so far this biography has been a quick and interesting read.

Having read further, I am happy to report that this bio does include some documentary evidence, including a few excerpts from letters. However, as one review I read points out, Smiley is VERY fond of using Freud. I have mixed feelings about Freud as applied to literature (it depends on how his theories are used), but I really find it especially unappealing when applied to the narrative of a person's life. Smiley seems to be "reading" Dickens as if he were a character in a novel. Modern psychology, while heavily influenced by Freud's ideas, has moved on, and in fact discredited many of his theories. I guess Smiley didn't get the memo.

I'm returning to this review to down-grade the stars. The more I think about this book, the more I hate it. In literary criticism, we've mostly turned away from using an author's life to "decode" his or her works. How much more problematic is it to analyze a life based on the works, then? And I keep thinking about her assertion that all characters are a part of the author. To diagnose an artist's internal life based on the figments of his or her imagination seems outright dangerous to me. If I can imagine terrible violence and suffering, what does this say about me? Nothing at all, I hope, unless I delight in it or try to pass it off as something admirable in itself. And you can't have it both ways: Smiley points to parallels in characters and real people Dickens knew (and some of whom he admitted to using as models). So are these characters based on real people, or are they fragments of Dickens own psyche? Because I don't think they can be both. Nor are these questions I find at all interesting. Now I really just want to read Ackroyd's biography. Too bad my Kindle is down for the moment.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be an extremely readable and insightful biography. Smiley does frequently refer to Peter Ackroyd’s massive biography of Dickens but do not make the mistake and think her biography is a shadow of Ackroyd.

Jane Smiley is a highly respected novelist herself and her biography of Dickens very often focusses itself through the eyes of a fellow novelist. Thus, the reader is granted a different set of eyes than the often wonderful but somewhat less creative and imaginative lens of an academic writer. Another of the strengths of this biography is how Smiley draws upon Jung and Freud to help explain the reasoning behind the development and presentation of many of Dickens’s characters.

I found Smiley’s commentary and analysis of Dickens later novels to be especially insightful and illuminating. From Dombey onwards, Smiley presents Dickens in a refreshingly interesting light. Another of the strengths of this book is how Smiley balances and comments upon the relationship that developed between Dickens and Ellen Ternan. Never preachy or excessively speculative, Smiley offers a tightly organized insight into their relationship.

This biography is written by an accomplished author. To read this book is to see Dickens’s life in a refreshingly new light. The length of this biography runs a mere 209 pages so do not expect the remarkable depth of an Ackroyd, Slater or Tomalin. What you can expect is a portal of insight and understanding of the novels of Charles Dickens.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a fan of biography in general, but I especially tend to avoid biographies of writers (or other artists). I think a work of art should stand (or fall) on its own, regardless of the difficulties in the life of the artist. This little book is a literary biography--more about the novels than gossip about the writer--and suits me very well. A quote from the introduction:

"His novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels, and just as his novels were in part commentary on his life, so his actions, in part, grew out of the way that writing novels gave his feelings and thoughts specific being. To a novelist, his work is not his product, but his experience. Over time, his readers are further and further removed from the details of his life, but while they are reading his books, they are in his presence, experiencing his process of thought and imagination as it precipitates inchoate idea to particular word."

Well worth reading.

[Michael K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been interested in Charles Dickens since I fell in love with his work of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. While I read his work A TALE OF TWO CITIES, I did not find it as interesting as the visitation and extreme changes in Ebenezer Scrooge. That notwithstanding I find him to be an interesting writer at the very least. I imagine, as we get older, that we become fonder of the older classics in our lives and try to grasp ahold of them. Jane Smiley brings Charles Dickens more to life than he had been in our past. She does go into some detail how he became very atuned to each and every character he created and in some small way each and every one of them became part of him.

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several years ago, when I took a course entirely devoted to Dickens, I remember thinking that it would have been nice if he had died about 30 years sooner, just to spare me from any more of his writing. My opinion on this has changed, of course, but such are the feelings that his inexhaustible tome of works inspires in students.

At a little over 200 pages, Smiley’s biography of Dickens is shorter than all of Dickens’ novels, even the unfinished Edwin Drood. Dickens, who led such a prolific and public life, left plenty of fodder for biographers to work with, so Smiley should be commended for squishing and condensing the inimitable Dickens into a biographical postscript.

I appreciated that Smiley concentrated on the evolution of Dickens’ female characters and I enjoyed getting a sweeping overview of his novels. I thought she did a good job of balancing analysis, literary theory, facts, and some of the seedier, unsubstantiated parts of Dickens’ life, most notably, his relationship with Ellen Ternan.

I did think Smiley overused Ackroyd as a secondary source. I’m sure that the information she gleaned seemed small in comparison to the amount of information Ackroyd’s 1990 biography offers (it’s over 1000 pages), but her frequent references to Ackroyd made me wonder if what I was reading amounted to an abridgement of Ackroyd’s work.

Anyone who has ever read a Dickens biography comes away from it with mixed feelings. Much of Dickens’ actions in his public and private life seem contradictory, selfish, and misogynistic. At times he appears to be a loveable philanthropist and at other times obnoxious, melodramatic, and unbearably tyrannical. I was relieved to find that even his contemporaries often felt his writing was too “Dickensy.” However, despite my ambivalent feelings towards Dickens, I keep coming back to him again and again. Whether one finds him frustrating or fascinating, Dickens will not be ignored.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book. While many biographies set out to tell the private life behind the public persona, Smiley, instead, attempts to do a psychological analysis on Dickens based on what we know of his private life in conjunction with what he was writing at any given time. The book is light on biographical detail, mentioning in passing people who surely played large roles in Dickens's life, and to whom other, more traditional biographers, would have surely devoted more time. But, if you've read the bulk of Dickens's work, it is interesting to see how his characters, themes, etc., correspond with what was going on in his personal life at any given time. Of course, all of it is so much speculation and pop psychology, and, therefore, a bit unfair to Dickens, himself, who isn't here to either cry foul or be stunned with self-revelation.

If you've never read much about Dickens's life, or have only read a couple of his novels, this is not the biography to start with. Smiley's book is much better suited to those who are already very familiar with Dickens, know his stories and characters, and who want to delve a little deeper into the novelist and what (may have) motivated him to write each novel the way he did.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago, I read all fifteen of Dickens' novels in chronological order. It was an absolute delight to have done so, as it revealed to me the depth and breadth of his talent that had only been hinted at by the occasional reading of his work in my younger days. But I hadn't read an overview of his life until now. Smiley wrote an accessible, informative, engaging, and smart look at the man and his work.
She places Dickens firmly as a pioneer of modernity - first as the novelist who changed the form from a document of country life to an examination of urbanity, from stories of upper classes to stories of all classes, and secondly as the original celebrity who had to figure out how to divide his public life from his private. He messed this up big time with his divorce from the mother of his ten children (in 16 years - that poor woman!). She even declares that Dickens was the first to perform violent acts of horror on stage during his late in life readings of the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist. All this and insights into the construction and meaning of each of the novels. A short book, but a remarkable one.

[Jen's Book Den · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without having read anything by author Jane Smiley in the past, I was pleasantly impressed by the eloquence of this Pulitzer Prize winner’s writing style. Smiley easily draws the reader into the life and times of Charles Dickens, and allows the reader to not only get know the man, but also the inner workings of what inspired and influenced some of the greatest novel writing in history.

Among some of things brought to my attention by Smiley was the fact that Oliver Twist “was the first English novel to take a child as its protagonist”. “In some sense, Oliver Twist turned the world upside down and offered a new view of things to Dickens’s readers – life at the bottom of Victorian society, as seen through the eyes of a child”.

Charles Dickens: A Life is by no means a lengthy book. I was fascinated by the magnificence of the material contained in these pages. Not only does the reader get to examine the man, an examination of his writings is inevitable and insightful. The vast philosophical and psychological themes that Dickens sought to explore and capture in his works truly made him one of the most spectacular writers in literature. At 27 years old, Dickens was “…the most famous writer of his day”.

Another extraordinary detail Smiley brings to light is the fact that it was not until the time of Dickens that an author was able “…to support himself or herself through the sales of his or her own work, and in this Dickens was pioneer and exemplar”. “He differed from all of his contemporaries in that he represented no group, therefore he came to represent all”.

Smiley does exemplary work herself. Each page is abounding in the author’s expertise, intimacy and understanding of Dickens, giving this book credibility and readability. One great truth that Smiley touches upon is the significance of the published written word. “The new machinery of capitalistic publishing had carried his work far and wide, bringing a single man, a single voice, into a personal relationship with huge numbers of people of whom he had never met, and yet who felt intimate with him, because the novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness”.

For any person who loves literature, this quick study of Charles Dickens: A Life is one of the most affluent books I would highly recommend. “Charles Dickens was a phenomenon by any standard”.

[Marcie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chances are sometime in your life you've been introduced to Charles Dickens, weather it be from reading his novels or seeing his characters come to life on film and stage. One of his popular holiday books, A Christmas Carol is well known. I know I've watched on television quite a few film versions from the classic 1939 movie to The Muppets and to the 2009 remake. A Christmas Carol was the first novel I read by Charles Dickens. My seventh grade teacher tortured us with the complexity of Dickens. I say tortured because my young mind couldn't yet fathom the complexities of his novels. I didn't learn to appreciate Dickens until later in life. In fact I've even read a few of his novels for pleasure. That's right no grade was involved. But who is the man behind these novels? What inspired him? What drove him?
Charles Dickens: A Life by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jane Smiley is an interesting portrait of the man behind the novels. Instead of writing about Dickens from birth to death, Smiley concentrates on what influenced Dickens at the time of his writing. Charles Dickens was an eccentric character. He was a bit flamboyant, charismatic, very intelligent and socially conscious. He was also peculiar. His life and writing was influenced by many things that happened in his childhood, his personal views on marriage, and his social responsibilities. He was a hard working man. Always on the go. Charles Dickens was a rock star of the literary world. People loved and hated him. Jane Smiley brings out the intricacies of Charles Dickens life. She introduces a more private side of Dickens and how his choices influenced his novels.
I've read a few biographies about Charles Dickens but I really enjoyed this book. Jane Smiley did a fantastic job of showing different sides of the mysterious Dickens through his literary masterpieces. Charles Dickens: A Life is full of valuable information that will have you not only understanding the man behind the public figure but also his novels. I think this is definitely a book any Dickens fan would love to read.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago, on a rainy, damp February day straight out of Bleak House, I toured the Dickens Museum in London, housed in a home he occupied in his early years of marriage. A pedestal stand in one of the bedrooms contains an edition of All The Year Round, the periodical he founded, open to Dickens's essay condemning his wife as a poor mother, companion, and more. It's tough to read even today--the two other bedraggled tourists in the room and I had a lively discussion. How could a novelist known for wit and charm and human insight and redemption publicly humiliate anyone like that, let alone a woman who had borne him ten children?

Why bring the up? Because Smiley's biography is much less about places, dates and events and more about the intertwining of the man and his art. I've read just about all of his novels and a good many of his other works. Smiley places them in the context of his life events, drawing warranted but not overdone parallels between them. Her approach to his life story makes sense of the seeming contradictions among his public and private personas, the quality of his plotting and characters, the arenas, large and small, in which the stories play out, and more. Noting is excused, but much is explained, often with the right amount of sympathy toward this first modern celebrity.

At 200 pages it is very worth a read for anyone who loves Dickens but also, whether reading one of his tomes or about an episode in his life, occasionally wants to shout, "Dickens, what were you thinking!!!"

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this biography of Dickens by author Jane Smiley (whom I met once when I was in college. Neato.). I appreciated how Smiley's own insights as a novelist informed her commentary of his life, his personal writings, and his creative works. Her portrayal was thoughtful, balanced, generous, yet discerning. Dickens is a fascinating subject, and Smiley capably diagrams the scope of his impact on literature, on Victorian society and politics, on the novel, and on the profession of author. I knew he was celebrated, prolific, and brilliant, but I had less understanding of just what a phenomenon and trailblazer he was. I look forward to reading this again, and to delving into more of Dickens' works.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several biographies of Dickens over the year. This one is my favorite. Jane Smiley is a novelist who takes a look at the life through the works. The idea behind this book and the series it is a part of, is essentially an "appreciation" of Dickens' works. Although the books covers the main biographical details of the life, what has been covered by other books, it looks individually at all the works. It is, in some respects, a critical study of Dickens, but more for the average Dickens reader.

This is a good book to refer back and forth to, whenever you happen to be reading Dickens, for some insights and understandings -- written in a very natural, easy prose. Coupled with Claire Tomalin's work, it presents a good "side by side" of the life and work.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think I had any great interest in Charles Dickens (1812-1870), but novelist Jane Smiley's brief biography is pretty much irresistible. She interprets Dicken's life and work with a novelist's eye, and presents him as a Victorian superstar: indeed, his life and work prefigures 20th-century celebrities pretty closely. Smiley thinks Dickens and Shakespeare are the high points of English literature so far. Well, maybe so, but I don't think I'll be rushing on to reading Dickens' works....

The book bogs down a bit at times with detailed discussions of the novels. But after a break, I'd come back and go on to her writeup of the next book, and it all made sense, and was pretty interesting. As was his life: 10 kids in 16 years with his poor wife, and then he found her getting fat & dull. Wow. And the readings! Dickens was a serious amateur actor and showman, and found he had a real talent for reading selected bits of his own works to paying audiences, starting with "A Christmas Carol." These were a huge success, and very lucrative, even if the stress of performance may have driven him to an early grave.

So. You should pick up her book, even if Victorian novels aren't really your thing. Smiley has a very sharp eye, and is a fine writer. 4.5 stars.

[Kathrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich finde es als Einstieg für eine Dickens Biografie ganz gut. Jedoch finde ich es fragwürdig, dass es (außer die Angaben zu Dickens eigenen Werken) keine Quellenangaben gibt, da die Autorin beispielsweise auch andere Dickens Biografen und/oder seine Zeitgenossen wie andere Schriftsteller zitiert. Das empfinde ich als Manko.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this look at the life and work of the iconic English novelist fascinating. I haven't read all of Dickens's books, so some of the discussion of his work was beyond me, but I appreciated knowing more about the character and personal life of the man who has so greatly influenced literature.

[Vicki Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good and thorough biography of Dickens, considering that it's fairly short. I was hoping to read more about his childhood, but that part was pretty limited. He had quite an interesting life. The author has many good comments on his various works. I was a bit surprised that there was no index.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was both though-provoking and enjoyable. I liked the structural concept of the book as showing parallel between what was happening in Dickens's novels and in his life, though I thought she ran out of steam at the end. As a writer herself, Jane Smiley's observations about the novel as a form and about Dickens's books in particular, were rich and insightful. She makes an interesting and I thought persuasive case that, although Dickens writes often about the challenges and unfairness experienced by the "underclass," his ultimate goal was to achieve social order and that he was deathly afraid of unrest. She suggests that his social vision is "formed by the recognition that in the world around him there are few bonds of social responsibility or generous humanity linking class to class or individual to individual, and that the government speaks and acts only for a small portion of the citizens" - a theme which certainly has resonance today. On the subject of where social change must come from, she asserts that Dickens believed it was "not enough to seize power or to change where in society power lies. With power must come an inner sense of connection to others..." She notes, however, that "we should not interpret him as the sort of left liberal we know today -- he was racist, imperialist, sometimes anti-Semitic, a believe in harsh prison conditions, and distrustful of trade unions."

This book is not just for those who have read many of Dickens' novels. While she makes many allusions to passages from the books, she generally does a good job of placing them in context for the reader. I hope and believe that most people who read this book will be compelled to reread, or enjoy for the first time, the works by this pivotal author.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned that Dickens was a dandy, short, and very energetic. He typically walked twenty to thirty miles every day and still found the strength to write a dozen novels, edit magazines, give readings to huge audiences, travel, beget ten children, and carry on a shady relationship with an actress nearly half his age. Smiley's life of Dickens is a very quick, very informative read that leaves you feeling you know Dickens the celebrity as well as many of his contemporary neighbors would have. Smiley is a novelist herself and has written extensively on the theory of the novel: at times in this book I got bogged down in her theorizing and Freudian interpretations of the affairs of Dickens' life. I guess I wasn't looking so much for an interpretation of Dickens' work and life as I was hoping for a civil introduction to the man. And for the most part, that's what Smiley delivers. She also suggests a short list of the novels that a Dickens neophyte should begin with: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend.

[Dan Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad overview of Dickens' life & works. Best parts are re the books rather than that of Dickens' life--which, to me, focused too much on his private relationships via a kind of Freudian psychoanalysis that is pretty ho hum.

Recommend if you are curious about how Dickens' works evolved overtime & how he matured as an artist. Although I would probably first recommend Charles Dickens by G.K Chesterton.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about these "famous author on famous author" mini-biographies. On the one hand, it would be a privilege to spend an evening hearing Jane Smiley talk about Charles Dickens (or any number of subjects), so this is a fun substitute for that experience. On the other hand, my favorite biographies tend to be meatier and more obsessive ("Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay" or "Virginia Woolf" by Hermione Lee), and I can't help wishing sometimes that these mini-bios were something that they were never intended to be.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy bio to read. Smiley framed her narrative around his stories and what was occurring in his life the whole time. If you want a more expansive bio full of every detail in his life, maybe look for something else, perhaps Ackroyd's.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Jenna Gareis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five things about Charles Dickens: A Life by Jane Smiley 5/5⭐️s

1. First, this is a slim volume but it manages to cover Dickens’s life, relationships, and writings without compromising or circumnavigating his complexities. Smiley is incredibly skilled, restrained, and generous all at once.
2. I was captivated from the first, as Smiley explains that hers is an attempt to explore Dickens life in the chronology with which he himself chose (or was forced) to reveal it. This, it does not start with his childhood - as he kept this hidden for most of his life and instead begins with Pickwick which was his first success.
3. I’ve spent this year with Dickens. I’ve read all of his major works in the last two years…12 of them this year. I have done so with a chip on my shoulder…loved him and his work with restraint…because of his treatment of of his devoted wife Catherine. Smiley manages to honor Catherine while creating within me a deep empathy for the man.
4. “Most other great innovators owe something to someone - even Shakespeare was preceded by Christopher Marlowe… Dickens however spoke in a new voice, in a new form, to a new audience, a new world, about several old ideas reconsidered for the new system of capitalism - that care and respect are owed to the weakest and meekest in society, rather than to the strongest; the ways in which class and money divide humans from one another are artificial and dangerous; that pleasure and physical comfort are positive goods; that the spiritual lives of the powerful have social and economic ramifications…Dickens grasped this idea from the earliest stages of his career and demonstrated his increasingly sophisticated grasp of it in the plots characterizations, themes, and styles of every single novel he wrote. This is the root source of his greatness. That he did so in English at the very moment when England was establishing herself as a worldwide force is the root source of his importance. That he combined his artistic vision with social action in an outpouring of energy and hard work is the root source of his uniqueness.”
5. “The question is not whether Dickens’s characters are realistic…but whether he makes a compelling case for the origins and resolutions of their dilemmas, which are, in many cases, extreme and melodramatic. These are exactly the terms in which most people experience their own dilemmas - life or death propositions that are tremendously challenging to resolve… Dickens excelled at bodying forth the drama of the inner battle… the resolution [for his characters] always takes place within the character first and then in the social nexus.”
6. Team Dickens for life!

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

A celebrity before the days of celebrity, Charles Dickens was a genius and an enigma who created some of the most potent novels in history. Behind the scenes, Dickens was a man unlike any other, with strange beliefs, warring passions and an eclectic lifestyle. In this biography by famous author Jane Smiley, Dickens’ life and works are explored in great depth and with generous helpings of sympathy, interest and wonder. From his secrecy about his troubled childhood to his eventual marriage to a woman whom he would one day repudiate, Smiley gives us a profound insight into the inner workings of the man whose fame seemed to be ever increasing. She shares with her readers his rapturous enjoyment of his notoriety and reveals the ways Dickens sought to eradicate society’s social and political ills through his stories. She also sheds light on how he unintentionally captured the personalities and behaviors of both himself and his counterparts in his amazingly fluid and distinctive tales. Smiley reveals all this with a deep sense of understanding and intimate knowledge that mirrors the devotion of his many fans, and even the critics who panned him. Part biography, part literary critique, Charles Dickens: A Life is at once a fascinating study of a man who was ahead of his time and also, tragically, a product of it.

Though I haven’t read Dickens’ work extensively, I do consider him to be one of my favorite authors, and I’m constantly amazed at the unique and sensitive qualities of his writing. I am, in fact, so interested in Dickens and his work that I’m trying to undertake a project where I read all his published work incrementally throughout the new year. It's a vast undertaking, for most of Dickens’ books are very long, but I hope one day to be able to complete this journey through the works of an author whom I find amazing and inimitable. When I was approached to review this book, I did a happy little dance of joy and immediately said yes, for I could think of no better way to get close to this author than to read about his life and work in biographical form. This book was entrancing from the outset, and Smiley’s manipulation of her material was both expert and alluring. I learned so much about Dickens that I felt, as I closed the covers, as if I had gotten an intimate peek into the mind of a man who defies easy description.

As many readers of Dickens will attest, there is no one who writes a story in quite the way this man did. Many other authors manage to imitate him in their rich portrayal of character, but there is truly only one Dickens, and love him or hate him, this cannot be denied. One of the things that was most interesting about this book was discovering that each story he wrote had a good deal of autobiographical material threaded through it, and as Dickens matured as an author and his perceptions of the world changed, his characters also grew more evolved and multifaceted. Many of his characters were archetypes, and many of them were based on the very people he lived with, worked with or associated closely with. I found it interesting that Dickens seemed to have only two or three versions of the women in his tales, and these women were based on the limited and very prejudicial beliefs that he held. Most of his female characters were either based on his wife (who, in later years, he held little esteem for) or took on the virginal and unsullied role of those paramours that Dickens always kept out of public sight. It's stated rather clearly that it's only at the end of his life that Dickens truly began to understand women, and this also was reflected in his work.

Dickens was also very adept at making social statements and addressing pressing public concerns in his work, and used the platform of his novels to share his disgust and sadness at the failure of the system to adequately provide for the lower class. Much of his work has the hallmark of broaching topics of public sanitation, the workhouse, orphanages, and other systems where people fall through the cracks and are forgotten. Though these are topics he includes in his books, these aren’t the subjects of his books, and in his own way Dickens creates a pastiche of narrative, character and drama with an underlying and low level admonishment of the system that so many found themselves at the mercy of. Dickens sought to entertain but also to educate, and in this light, his work takes on a new meaning and portent that most modern readers remain unaware of. Not only was Dickens a very successful author, he was arguably the first celebrity to ever take the stage, with dramatic readings and recitations punctuating his literary work.

The one area where I have a bone to pick with Dickens is in his abysmal treatment of his wife. While it's true she wasn’t his first choice, as time went on and she made the gradual transition from paramour to maternal figure, Dickens seemed to gradually devalue her and make increasingly impractical demands of her. It seems he could only think of women in very limited ways, and her gradual transition from one type of woman to another drew his ire and ill-concealed hatred. It's also worth noting that Dickens’ life was marked by considerable restlessness and a desire for concealment and movement. The fact that he had scores of children and a wife who was more content to stay put was just another annoyance that he seemed to never get over. As an artist, Dickens was sublime, but as an everyday man, he was irascible and demanding, and I doubt I would have wanted to know him personally, though at times he was known to be generous, kind and exciting.

I had the time of my life with this book, getting to know both the very private and illustrious public sides of Dickens’ life. I would recommend this book to readers who are fans of his work or are just curious about the legendary artist who swept the country by storm and created the “domestic drama,” a type of novel that had never been attempted before. It was a pleasure to read this biography because, while it was clear that Smiley much admired and touted Dickens and his work, she was not blinded by his stardom and was able to paint the man behind the words with realism, honesty and impartiality. A very solid biography. Recommended.