Award-winning Claire Tomalin, author of
A Life of My Own
, sets the standard for sophisticated and popular biography, having written lives of Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, and Thomas Hardy, among others. Here she tackles the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England, Charles Dickens; a literary leviathan whose own difficult path to greatness inspired the creation of classic novels such as
Great Expectations
,
David Copperfield
Oliver Twist
, and
Hard Times
.
From his sensational public appearances to the obsessive love affair that led him to betray, deceive, and break with those closest to him,
Charles Dickens: A Life
is a triumph of the biographer’s craft, a comedy that turns to tragedy in a story worthy of Dickens’ own pen.