The Mystery of Charles Dickens

By: A. N. Wilson

Narrated by: Mark Meadows

A lively and insightful biographical celebration of the imaginative genius of Charles Dickens, published in commemoration of 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. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his 58 years when he died - an occasion marked by a crowded funeral at Westminster Abbey, despite his waking wishes for a small affair. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them.

Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’ fiction drew from his life - a fact he acknowledged. Like Oliver Twist, Dickens suffered a wretched childhood, then grew up to become not only a respectable gentleman, but an artist of prodigious popularity. Dickens knew firsthand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage.

Going beyond standard narrative biography, A. N. Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens’ vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of 19th-century readers - and why they continue to resonate today.

©2020 A. N. Wilson (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

Joyfully emlightening

As true a tragic comedy as life itself. It deserves yet another listen. Full of leads to a wide range of other literature.

Riveting!

If you like reading Dickens, you’ll like this! The narrator is excellent too. This is also good for anyone wanting to learn more about Victorian English history.

Interesting to a point

It was good to better understand Dickens but the book was quite weak and had told everything it had to tell within the first couple of chapters.

Excellent bio of Dickens with new insights

I have read several biographies of Charles Dickens and decided to give this new one a try, though I was not hopeful that there would be anything new. I was pleasantly surprised. The author uses several sources, and comes to some plausible conclusions/assumptions. I found it interesting and entertaining and worth the 10 hours of my time.

One thesis, repeated

Wilson presents convincing evidence that Dickens was a tormented soul due to a highly insecure childhood. He then ably demonstrates how Dickens' unconscious insecurities were revealed in his erratic, narcissistic behavior, and most importantly, in his writing.

Wilson then goes on to claim, many times, that we readers are fortunate Dickens' psychic suffering remained unconscious and unhealed. That is quite a leap, and I will not jump. I find myself trying to imagine what Dickens might have written if he'd had the opportunity to develop insight, and can't help thinking that it would have been terrific stuff.