Charles Dickens at 200: Books on the great writer’s life and surroundings
Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth. Today we take a look at a selection of Yale books and author events that delve deep into the great writer’s life, work and surroundings. Make no mistake, you will be hearing a lot about Charles Dickens this year. From glossy TV adaptations to high-minded documentaries, … Read more
Tales from the Pleasure Garden: New book from Yale unearths Vauxhall Gardens
Vauxhall Gardens was the foremost pleasure garden of eighteenth and nineteenth-century London. The recently published Vauxhall Gardens: A History by David E. Coke and Alan Borg unearths this forgotten gem of London’s history, revealing the teeming life, the spectacular art and the ever-present music of Vauxhall in fascinating detail. Visiting Vauxhall today – with its urban sprawl of modern … Read more
Author Article by Michael Slater: Charles Dickens – An Attempt on His Life
In Charles Dickens, MICHAEL SLATER draws upon a lifetime’s study to bring us a fascinating exploration of the author’s personal and emotional life, his high-profile public activities, the relentless travel and his astonishing productivity. Here Michael Slater explains his own approach to the daunting task of writing a new biography of this prodigiously brilliant figure. I … Read more
Book of the Month – December
FICTIONAL LONDON: Dickens’s Tales of the City From his earliest published stories to his last uncompleted novel, London is nearly always at the heart of Dickens’s fiction. He needed the stimulus of walking the city’s teeming streets (‘that great magic lantern’ he called them) to fire his imagination and to inspire him to create his … Read more
Review – Charles Dickens by Michael Slater
“The first thing to say is that the full title of this biography is Charles Dickens: a life defined by writing and this is the main thrust of Michael Slater’s book. His personal life, his marriage, his separation from his wife, his children and his later love, Nellie Ternan, though appearing in the narrative are … Read more
