The Life of Charles Dickens

Written by Dickens’s closest friend and literary confidant, this is the definitive Victorian biography of Charles Dickens—an intimate, authoritative account of the novelist’s life from his impoverished, painful childhood to his triumphant career and early death. Forster, who knew Dickens for decades and served as his adviser and executor, draws on private letters and personal memory to reveal the man behind the beloved books, including the traumatic blacking-factory episode Dickens hid from the world. Rich in detail and affection, it shaped all later understanding of the great novelist. A landmark of literary biography, The Life of Charles Dickens remains the essential firsthand portrait of one of the greatest writers in the English language.