The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens
Jenny Hartley
The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens
What was it like to be Charles Dickens? His letters are the nearest we can get to a Dickens autobiography: vivid close-up snapshots of a life lived at maximum intensity. This is the first selection to be made from the magisterial twelve-volume British Academy Pilgrim Edition of his letters. From over fourteen thousand, four hundred and fifty have been cherry-picked to give readers the best essence of 'the Sparkler of Albion'. Here he is writing out of the heat of the moment: as a novelist, journalist, and magazine editor; as a social campaigner and traveller in Europe and America, and as friend, lover, husband, and father.
4.8 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Biography, Literary Studies & Criticism |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
496 |
| RRP |
£20.00 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0199591411 |
| Publisher |
Oxford University Press |
| |
What was it like to be Charles Dickens? His letters are the nearest we can get to a Dickens autobiography: vivid close-up snapshots of a life lived at maximum intensity. This is the first selection to be made from the magisterial twelve-volume British Academy Pilgrim Edition of his letters. From over fourteen thousand, four hundred and fifty have been cherry-picked to give readers the best essence of 'the Sparkler of Albion'. Here he is writing out of the heat of the moment: as a novelist, journalist, and magazine editor; as a social campaigner and traveller in Europe and America, and as friend, lover, husband, and father.
Reviews
The Independent
Boyd Tonkin
“Edited with unobtrusive intelligence and insight … how does an editor transform the epistles of a writer who dramatised both self and society as a top-speed, high-resolution spectacle into a mirror for the soul? Hartley places letters side by side, or runs them into sequences, so that through contiguity each adds light and shade to its neighbour. This dialogue brings a stereoscopic depth of field that offsets the breathless momentum ... superb”
03/02/2012
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The Literary Review
Catherine Peters
“Jenny Hartley has risen splendidly to the difficult challenge of making a representative choice from the twelve-volume Pilgrim Collected Letters. An affordable selection of this quality has long been needed, and Dickens lovers will all be grateful to Hartley for her skill and judgement.”
01/02/2012
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The New Statesman
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
“To whittle down the achievement of the Pilgrim editors to a single volume is the scholarly equivalent of trying to write the Lord's Prayer on a grain of rice. That Jenny Hartley has taken up the challenge deserves the gratitude of every reader of Dickens. That she has succeeded so magnificently deserves the highest praise. Her selection is a miracle of compression and editorial tact.”
05/02/2012
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The Scotsman
Ian Campbell
“The Pilgrim edition is an achievement that will not be repeated, but here is a very strong and very various selection ... His energy drives through them all: his strong sense of family (though his extra-family affairs do not show much here); his strong sense of money (the readings, though immensely popular, took their toll on his health); his ability to divide his attention between many subjects; his tact in framing replies to the less friendly as well as the friendly communication; his affection for family and friends; the occasional glimpse (above all to Forster) of the turmoil that lay behind the finished writing of the sparkling Dickens world.”
18/02/2012
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The Sunday Times
John Carey
“From the 14,000 surviving letters Jenny Hartley has chosen 450 that reflect every facet of Dickens’s life … This is Dickens by Dickens. Whatever else comes out in this bicentenary year, do not miss it.”
05/02/2012
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The Observer
Peter Conrad
“… Dickens is popularly regarded as a kind of literary Toby jug, pouring forth merriment and frothy joviality. The truth — as revealed by the Selected Letters — is grimmer, stranger, and madder.”
26/02/2012
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The Evening Standard
David Sexton
“It's a thrilling, surprisingly fresh book. These letters don't just take us into the midst of Dickens's life, they are themselves exhilarating pieces of writing ... There is one serious criticism to make of it, though: to accommodate as many letters as possible, the publishers have made the type too small for easy reading in anything less than perfect light, despite its chunky 458 pages. Intended as generosity, that's a frustration. Roll on the enlargeable e-book.”
02/02/2012
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