A brilliant and insightful celebration of the imaginative genius of Charles Dickens, published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his death.
Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Although he specified an unpretentious funeral, it was inevitable that crowds flocked to his open grave in Westminster Abbey. But it was not chiefly as an orator, performer or public man that they revered him. He lived as a novelist. A. N. Wilson follows Dickens through the last days of his life, and in doing so, recalls its key events - the wretched childhood, the prodigious popularity, the scandal of the failed marriage. This is a book which revisits the wellspring of Dickens' imagination, revealing why his novels have such instantaneous appeal and why they endure. It also uncovers the double standards of both the man and his times.
