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The definitive biography of Dickens is Edgar Johnson's CHARLES DICKENS: HIS TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH (2 vols., 1952). This supersedes but does not render obsolete the long-standing "official" biography by John Forster, THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS (3 vols., 1872-1873; new ed., 2 vols., 1966). A comprehensive examination of Dickens' life and work by close to 60 scholars can be found in the OXFORD READER'S COMPANION TO DICKENS (1999), edited by Paul Schlicke. The most interesting psychological study is Edmund Wilson's "Dickens: The Two Scrooges," in THE WOUND AND THE BOW: SEVEN STUDIES IN LITERATURE (1941). The best critical interpretation is J. Hillis Miller's CHARLES DICKENS: THE WORLD OF HIS NOVELS (1958). F.R. and Q.D. Leavis' DICKENS THE NOVELIST (1970) contains essays on Dickens' major novels. For the earlier novels the most informative reading is Steven Marcus' DICKENS: FROM PICKWICK TO DOMBEY (1965). The most useful book on the social and historical background of the novels is Humphry House's THE DICKENS WORLD (1941; 2d ed. 1950).
 Back to Later Works
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Source:
From ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY (17 VOLS), Gale Group, © 1998 Gale. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.
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