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The tumultuous life of Englands greatest novelist beautifully rendered by unparalleled literary biographer Claire Tomalin When Charles Dickens died in The Times of London successfully campaigned for his burial in Westminster Abbey the final resting place of Englands kings and heroes Thousands flocked to mourn the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England His books had made them laugh shown them the squalor and greed of English life and also the power of personal virtue and the strength of ordinary people In his last years Dickens drew adoring crowds to his public appearances had met presidents and princes and had amassed a fortuneLike a hero from his novels Dickens trod a hard path to greatness Born into a modest middle-class family his young life was overturned when his profligate father was sent to debtors prison and Dickens was forced into harsh and humiliating factory work Yet through these early setbacks he developed his remarkable eye for all that was absurd tragic and redemptive in London life He set out to succeed and with extraordinary speed and energy made himself into the greatest English novelist of the centuryYears later Dickenss daughter wrote to the author George Bernard Shaw quotIf you could make the public understand that my father was not a joyous jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch you would greatly oblige mequot Seen as the public champion of household harmony Dickens tore his own life apart betraying deceiving and breaking with friends and family while he pursued an obsessive love affairCharles Dickens A Life gives full measure to Dickenss heroic stature-his huge virtues both as a writer and as a human being- while observing his failings in both respects with an unblinking eye Renowned literary biographer Claire Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickenss own pen a comedy that turns to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great-his indomitable energy boldness imagination and showmanship-finally destroyed him The man who emerges is one of extraordinary contradictions whose vices and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.