{"product_id":"charles-dickens-isbn-9780143122050","title":"Charles Dickens","description":"Award-winning Claire Tomalin, author of \u003ci\u003eA Life of My Own\u003c\/i\u003e, 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 \u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eDavid Copperfield\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOliver Twist\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eHard Times\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom his sensational public appearances to the obsessive love affair that led him to betray, deceive, and break with those closest to him, \u003ci\u003eCharles Dickens: A Life\u003c\/i\u003e is a triumph of the biographer’s craft, a comedy that turns to tragedy in a story worthy of Dickens’ own pen.\"As Claire Tomalin demonstrates in her \u003cb\u003evivid and moving new biography\u003c\/b\u003e,  Dickens’s own life was rich in the attributes we call “Dickensian” —  shameless melodrama, gargantuan appetites, reversals of fortune... To  encompass this frenzy, Tomalin keeps the story racing. She brings  Dickens to life in all his maddening contradictions... \u003cb\u003eDickens walks off the page, and the pace never flags.\u003c\/b\u003e  Tomalin accomplishes this resurrection in a mere 417 pages of text,  supplemented by dozens of illustrations, several maps of Dickens’s  London and a helpful dramatis personae... \u003cb\u003eif you plan to read only one biography of the most popular Victorian writer, it should be this one.\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--THE WASHINGTON POST \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Enormously ambitious... admirable... warmly sympathetic and often eloquent.\" \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--Joyce Carol Oates, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOK\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Clear-eyed, sympathetic and scholarly\u003c\/b\u003e, she spreads the  whole canvas, alive with incident and detail, with places and people.  She writes of publishers, illustrators, collaborators and all Dickens’s  intersecting circles of friends and family. It is \u003cb\u003ewonderfully done\u003c\/b\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--THE ECONOMIST \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“[A] splendid history… \u003c\/b\u003eTomalin  skillfully presents the chief trauma of Dickens' young life — being  sent to work in a factory at age 12, after his father was imprisoned for  debt — and suggests the ways it left a lasting mark, from his sympathy  for the working class to his towering ambition and herculean work  ethic.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--SEATTLE TIMES \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"[O]nward-driving, hypnotically vivid…\u003c\/b\u003e  the result of Claire Tomalin's unrivalled talent for telling a story  and keeping a reader enthralled: long as the book is, I wanted more.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--THE GUARDIAN (UK) \u003c\/b\u003eCLAIRE TOMALIN worked in publishing and journalism for many years. She was literary editor first of the \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e and then the \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e, before devoting herself to writing full time. She is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies including \u003ci\u003eThomas Hardy\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eSamuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self\u003c\/i\u003e, which was the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year. She lives in England with her husband, Michael Frayn.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301411901669,"sku":"NP9780143122050","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143122050.jpg?v=1767723571","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/charles-dickens-isbn-9780143122050","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}