Best biography charles dickens

n the 20th of January, 1890, the Pall Mall Gazette lamented that Wilkie Collins, who died on September 23rd in the previous autumn, had not written a biography of his friend, mentor, and collaborator, Charles Dickens.

Best biography charles dickens

His very close relations with Dickens gave him opportunities that

came to no other man, and he could have told the story well. This cannot be doubted if a look is taken at the pencil and pen memoranda that are to be found in his copy of Forster's "Life"--the three-volume edition of 1872, which will be sold on Monday (3).

The marginal notes reveal not only Collins's feelings about Dickens's works and life, but also about the shortcomings of Forster's biography itself.

Forster, asserts Collins, is too inclined to conventional morality ("wretched English claptrap") and to eulogize Dickens. In criticizing Forster's praising his dead friend's "unbroken continuity of kindly impulse," Collins seems to imply that there was a dimension of Dickens's life that Forster was re