Synopses & Reviews
This long-awaited biography, twenty years after the last major account, uncovers Dickens the man through the profession in which he excelled. Drawing on a lifetimes study of this prodigiously brilliant figure, Michael Slater explores the personal and emotional life, the high-profile public activities, the relentless travel, the charitable works, the amateur theatricals and the astonishing productivity. But the core focus is Dickens career as a writer and professional author, covering not only his big novels but also his phenomenal output of other writing--letters, journalism, shorter fiction, plays, verses, essays, writings for children, travel books, speeches, and scripts for his public readings, and the relationships among them.
Slaters account, rooted in deep research but written with affection, clarity, and economy, illuminates the context of each of the great novels while locating the life of the author within the imagination that created them. It highlights Dickens boundless energy, his passion for order and fascination with disorder, his organizational genius, his deep concern for the poor and outrage at indifference towards them, his susceptibility towards young women, his love of Christmas and fairy tales, and his hatred of tyranny.
Richly and precisely illustrated with many rare images, this masterly work on the complete Dickens, man and writer, becomes the indispensable guide and companion to one of the greatest novelists in the language.
Review
"The attention Mr. Slater gives to Dickenss less familiar writingsthe short stories, journalism, and essaysis one of the things that distinguish his excellent biography. . . . An authoritative and engaging biography." The Economist -- Colin Lawson - Performance Practice Review
Review
“No living person is a greater authority on the life and works of Charles Dickens than Michael Slater.”Claire Tomalin -- Economist
Review
"… Indispensable … [Slater] assembles a million accumulated details, minutely examining the genesis of each work …. [This] is an incomparable portrait of the writing life of Dickens. Cumulatively, it is profoundly moving, chronicling the constant restless interaction between the life and work."
- Simon Callow, The Guardian -- Claire Tomalin
Review
“[Dickens] remains in the forefront of our literary consciousness, as firmly fixed there as Chaucer and Shakespeare, his mentors in the creation of the unforgettable. . . . Slaters imposing work has bicentennial written all over it. It is academic biography at its weightiest, exhaustive, and meticulous . . . [and] the rewards are considerable.”--Edwin M. Yoder,
Weekly Standard
-- Guardian
Review
“Insofar as any biography of a writer can be said to be a permanent contribution, Slaters is.”--Alexandra Mullen,
New Criterion
-- Edwin M. Yoder - Weekly Standard
Review
"Magnificent....For anybody who wants to know more about this dynamo of Victorian letters, Michael Slaters superb biography is the one to read." Michael Dirda, Washington Post -- Alexandra Mullen - New Criterion
Review
'\"Mr. Waller traces with care the filaments of larger historical forces that intertwine with the finer threads of Gertrudes single life . . . . Through Gertrude and her expansive, democratic social tastes, Mr. Waller offers a tapestry of the ideas and people of the age each one delicately interconnected with the rest.\"Emily Wilkinson, The Washington Times -- The Washington Post Political Bookworm'
Review
' “Foxs study of the 18th century is thorough and impressive.\"
Choice -- Megan Stride - PopMatters'
Review
and#8220;Straightforwardly told . . . full of rich period detail.and#8221;and#8212;The Wall Street Journal
Review
andldquo;Dakersandrsquo;s biography of Morrison opens up for exploration the many facets of his complicated existenceandmdash;as a salesman, financier, family man, public servant . . . and thus brings to life one of the early nineteenth centuryandrsquo;s most important figures.andrdquo;andmdash;John Small, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Synopsis
How the son of an innkeeper with a flair for making money became the richest commoner in nineteenth-century England, and what he did with his extraordinary success
This is the spectacular rags-to-riches story of James Morrison (1789-1857), who began life humbly but through hard work and entrepreneurial brilliance acquired a fortune unequalled in nineteenth-century England. Using the extensive Morrison archive, Caroline Dakers presents the first substantial biography of the richest commoner in England, recounting the details of Morrison's personal life while also placing him in the Victorian age of enterprise that made his success possible.
An affectionate husband and father of ten, Morrison made his first fortune in textiles, then a second in international finance. He invested in North American railways, was involved in global trade from Canton to Valparaiso, created hundreds of jobs, and relished the challenges of "the science of business". His success enabled him to acquire land, houses, and works of art on a scale to rival the grandest of aristocrats.
Synopsis
George Frederic Watts (18171904) was a titanic figure in nineteenth-century British art. The father of British Symbolism and portrait painter of his age, he forged a controversial career that spanned the reign of Queen Victoria. This book, the first in-depth biography of Watts, sheds new light on the pioneering spirit and breadth of mind of the artist.
Drawing on Wattss abundant personal correspondence and diaries and an array of other contemporary documents, the book chronicles the artists career and personal life, including his friendships with Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, William Gladstone, and Alfred Tennyson and his relationships with a series of singular women. The book also examines Wattss wide reforming zeal and political agenda as well as his role and dealings in the Victorian art world.
Synopsis
In this fascinating and innovative look at nineteenth-century London, Lynda Nead offers a new account of modernity and metropolitan life. She charts the relationship between Londons formation into a modern organized city in the 1860s and the emergence of new types of production and consumption of visual culture. She considers the role visual images played in the creation of a vibrant and diverse urban culture and how new kinds of publics were created for these representations. Shifting the focus of the history of modernity from Paris to London, Nead here argues for a different understanding of gender and public space in a society where women joined the everyday life of city streets and entered the debates concerning morality, spectacle, and adventure.
The book draws on texts and images of many kindsincluding acts of Parliament, literature, newspaper reports, private letters, maps, paintings, advertisements, posters, and banned obscene publications. Taking a highly interdisciplinary approach, Nead explores such intriguing topics as the efforts of urban improvers to move water, air, traffic, goods, and people in the Victorian metropolis; the impact of gas lighting and glass on urban leisure; and the obscenity legislation that emerged in response to new forms of visual mass culture that were perceived as dangerous and pervasive.
Synopsis
Gertrude Tennants life was remarkable for its length (18191918), but even more so for the influence she achieved as an unsurpassed London hostess. The salon she established when widowed in her early fifties attracted legions of celebrities, among them William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Thomas Huxley, John Everett Millais, Henry James, and Robert Browning. In her youth she had a fling with Gustave Flaubert, and in her later years she became the redoubtable mother-in-law to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. But as a woman in a male-dominated world, Mrs. Tennant has been remembered mainly as a footnote in the lives of eminent men.
This book recovers the lost life of Gertrude Tennant, drawing on a treasure trove of recently discovered family papersthousands of letters, including two dozen original letters from Flaubert to Tennant; dozens of diaries; and many other unpublished documents relating to Stanley and other famous figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. David Waller presents Gertrude Tennants life in colorful detail, placing her not only at the heart of a multigenerational, matriarchal family epic but also at the center of European social, literary, and intellectual life for the best part of a century.
Synopsis
During the 18th century, the arts of industry encompassed both liberal and mechanical realmsnot simply the representation of work in the fine art of painting, but the skills involved in the processes of industry itself. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Celina Fox argues that mechanics and artisans used four principal means to describe and rationalize their work: drawing, model-making, societies, and publications. These four channels, which form the four central themes of this engrossing book, provided the basis for experimentation and invention, for explanation and classification, for validation and authorization, and for promotion and celebration, thus bringing them into the public domain and achieving progress as a true part of the Enlightenment.
Synopsis
How the son of an innkeeper with a flair for making money became the richest commoner in nineteenth-century England, and what he did with his extraordinary success
Synopsis
This is the spectacular rags-to-riches story of James Morrison (1789and#8211;1857), who began life humbly but through hard work and entrepreneurial brilliance acquired a fortune unequalled in nineteenth-century England. Using the extensive Morrison archive, Caroline Dakers presents the first substantial biography of the richest commoner in England, recounting the details of Morrison's personal life while also placing him in the Victorian age of enterprise that made his success possible.
An affectionate husband and father of ten, Morrison made his first fortune in textiles, then a second in international finance. He invested in North American railways, was involved in global trade from Canton to Valparaiso, created hundreds of jobs, and relished the challenges of "the science of business". His success enabled him to acquire land, houses, and works of art on a scale to rival the grandest of aristocrats.
About the Author
“[This] genuinely interdisciplinary study . . . makes a major contribution to our knowledge of the lived experience of the Victorian city.”Timothy Barringer, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
“Provocative and brilliant.”Susan P. Casteras, Nineteenth Century Studies
“Splendid. . . . [Nead] brings an art historians fine sense of visual detail; indeed, one of the most striking features of the book is the wonderful illustrative material.”John Marriott, History Today