Charles Dickens in Love

A Biography

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British, Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book Charles Dickens in Love by Robert Garnett, Pegasus Books
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Robert Garnett ISBN: 9781453271575
Publisher: Pegasus Books Publication: December 4, 2012
Imprint: Pegasus Books Language: English
Author: Robert Garnett
ISBN: 9781453271575
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Publication: December 4, 2012
Imprint: Pegasus Books
Language: English

In celebration of the bicentennial of Charles Dickens’s birth, here is Dickens as you have never seen him before: an intimate and engaging portrait of the great author and the women he loved.

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where

I have opened my heart.” —Charles Dickens

When Charles Dickens died in 1870 he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world—the preeminent Victorian celebrity, universally mourned as both a noble spirit and the greatest of novelists. Yet when the first person named in his will turned out to be an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan, only a handful of people had any idea who she was. Of his romance with Ellen, Dickens had written, “it belongs to my life and probably will only die out of the same with the proprietor,” and so it was—until his death she remained the most important person in his life.

She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who “pervaded every chink and crevice” of his mind for three years, Maria Beadnell, and when she eventually jilted him he vowed that “I never can love any human creature but yourself.” A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life. “I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed,” he declared, and when he died over thirty years later he was still wearing her ring.

Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love. Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Dickens’s life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. 

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In celebration of the bicentennial of Charles Dickens’s birth, here is Dickens as you have never seen him before: an intimate and engaging portrait of the great author and the women he loved.

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where

I have opened my heart.” —Charles Dickens

When Charles Dickens died in 1870 he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world—the preeminent Victorian celebrity, universally mourned as both a noble spirit and the greatest of novelists. Yet when the first person named in his will turned out to be an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan, only a handful of people had any idea who she was. Of his romance with Ellen, Dickens had written, “it belongs to my life and probably will only die out of the same with the proprietor,” and so it was—until his death she remained the most important person in his life.

She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who “pervaded every chink and crevice” of his mind for three years, Maria Beadnell, and when she eventually jilted him he vowed that “I never can love any human creature but yourself.” A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life. “I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed,” he declared, and when he died over thirty years later he was still wearing her ring.

Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love. Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Dickens’s life and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely. 

More books from Pegasus Books

Cover of the book The Norman Conquest by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book Lady Tigers in the Concrete Jungle: How Softball and Sisterhood Saved Lives in the South Bronx by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Storms of War: A Novel (The Storms of War) by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book How to Plan a Crusade: Religious War in the High Middle Ages by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Beautiful Race: The Story of the Giro d'Italia by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book A Darker Shade of Blue: Stories by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Story of Egypt: The Civilization that Shaped the World by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book You Were There Before My Eyes by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Voices: A Novel by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book Perfume: A Century of Scents by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book Oscar Wilde and the Return of Jack the Ripper: An Oscar Wilde Mystery by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book Gravesend: A Novel by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book The Kamikaze Hunters: Fighting for the Pacific: 1945 by Robert Garnett
Cover of the book Operation Damocles by Robert Garnett
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy