THE LIFE AND LIES OF CHARLES DICKENS

An iconic author left a legacy of lies.

British literary scholar Kelly, the author of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, offers a brisk overview of the life of Charles Dickens (1812-1870), questioning many assumptions about the author that were presented in the first biography of Dickens by his friend and confidant John Forster. “In spite of the revelations it offered,” Kelly writes, Forster’s work “is less a biography than an exercise in posthumous brand management.” Diligent research and incisive close readings of Dickens’ writings ground Kelly’s investigation into the gaps, contradictions, and inconsistencies in the manipulated, self-serving story that many subsequent biographers have repeated: “Who and what can we trust in this narrative?” Dickens, she reveals, “started on the construction of his public persona almost as soon as he became famous. He was remarkable. He was self-made. He was the noble victim of untruthful rumours.” Kelly investigates the truth of some rumors, including plagiarism, antisemitism, racism, mental breakdown, and betrayals. She is puzzled by her subject’s effusive grieving over the death of a sister-in-law; his possible affair with another sister-in-law; and his virulent rejection of his wife. Regarding his claim of having been abandoned by his debt-riddled family and sent to work in a boot-polish shop when he was 12, Kelly finds evidence that he may have written advertising copy for the shop, instead. She wonders why he concealed the existence of a younger sister, who died at the age of 9 and may have had physical or mental disabilities. She appears, Kelly contends, in Dickens many depictions of characters with disabilities and of “an older child mourning the death of a younger sibling.” As for the author’s many health problems, she proposes that Dickens suffered from syphilis, contracted in the early 1840s, likely from extramarital affairs, and likely passed on to his wife.

 A literary bio that deftly untangles truth from untruth.