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The Most Famous Victorian Author, Then and Now
After listening to 10 of Dicken’s best-known novels in abridged BBC Radio full-cast dramatizations, I figured I was well prepared to enjoy a biography of his life, which is always a fascinating reveal of just how much author’s intertwine their own life experiences and personalities in various characters, along with the people they knew.

As Dickens has always been a famously keen observer of the humanity and Victorian society in particular, this was a perfect book to learn just how his own early experiences of child poverty in the workhouses where his father was thrown into the Marhsalsea Debtor’s Prison in Southwark when he was just a young boy. It colored his entire outlook on the hardships and cruelties of class society in Victorian England, and engendered a lifelong sympathy with the working and poor classes that he would champion throughout his life, even as he achieved success far beyond his humble beginnings and mingled increasingly with the upper classes.
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Dickens also shows what a driven and workaholic personality he had, writing constantly and late into the night, sometimes when the muse was upon him, and other times out of financial necessity and the unforgiving deadlines of his weekly installments for the literary journals he contributed to and later ran himself. He also continued to father children with his wife year after year, meaning more mouths to feed and then find places for in society as they grew up.
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As he got older, he also fell in love with a much younger actress and split with his wife, further complicating his life. He also discovered that his long-standing talent and passion for impersonations and reading his work was a commercial gold mine, and became one of the first media darlings of the era by doing dramatic readings from his works, including all the various accents and characters, to large and enthusiastic audiences.

Even as his health started to fail from the relentless pace of his readings and writing, he refused to give up or slow down, just another sign of his driven personality. He was a singular and towering figure in the Victorian literary canon, and also a hugely-influential public figure championing for social reforms for the poor and disadvantaged in a age of glaring gaps between rich and poor.