Synopses & Reviews
Charles Dickens's letters provide vivid close-up snapshots of a life lived at maximum intensity. This volume offers the first selection to be made from the magisterial twelve-volume British Academy Pilgrim Edition of his letters. From over fourteen thousand, editor Jenny Hartley has cherrypicked four hundred and fifty to give readers the essence of "the Sparkler of Albion." This eagerly awaited selection takes us straight to the heart of his life, to show us Dickens at first hand. Here he is writing out of the heat of the moment: as a novelist, journalist, and magazine editor; as a social campaigner and traveler in Europe and America; and as friend, lover, husband, and father. These letters were an outlet for his high spirits, sparkling wit, and caustic commentary--striking glimpses of the world around him, as seen through his highly individual and acutely observing eye. Whether you dip in or read straight through, this selection of his letters captures anew the brilliance of Dickens and the sheer pleasure of being in his company.
Review
"Biographies and other celebratory works have arrived with the bicentennial of Dickens's birth...this collection of several hundred letters may be the best." - Starred review in Publishers Weekly
"An absolute gem ... Reads better than any actual novel Dickens ever wrote." - Open Letters Monthly
Review
"Drawn from the twelve-volume British Academy Pilgrim Edition of more than 14,000 letters of Dickens addressed to 2,500 known correspondents, the 450 included in The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens are more revealing and more intimate than any biography." --Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books
"Biographies and other celebratory works have arrived with the bicentennial of Dickens's birth...this collection of several hundred letters may be the best." --Starred review in Publishers Weekly
"An absolute gem ... Reads better than any actual novel Dickens ever wrote." --Open Letters Monthly
"This is the book we have all been waiting for...I do not think anyone could have made a more balanced selection from the embarrassment of riches in his letters, or justified her choices more persuasively. We are all in Professor Hartley's debt for her magnificent edition." --Catherine Peters, Dickens Quarterly
"Hartley's selections nicely capture the range of Dicken's epistolary moods -- serious, playful, sentimental, indignant -- and the breadth of his literary and extraliterary interests and friendships." --Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century
About the Author
Jenny Hartley is Professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. Her recent
Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women was a
Guardian Book of the Week and hailed as "brilliant" by Claire Tomalin.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Charles Dickens
Abbreviations and Symbols
SELECTED LETTERS
Index