CHARLES DICKENS
Charles Dickens is generally accepted as being the greatest English novelist of all time. He was not born and did not die in London, but he described London like ‘a special correspondent for posterity’ according to a contemporary. He began walking the London streets as a child, and went on walking and observing streets, alleys, bridges, squares, prisons, shops, workhouses, Inns of Court, Gin palaces and theatres throughout his life.
He studied and depicted Londoners, from corrupt bankers to detectives, dressmakers, politicians, prostitutes, lawyers, child workers and businessmen. He chronicled London’s dirt, the blackness of the buildings,the stink of the river and the filth of the air, and called it a vile place, preferring Paris and the Kentish countryside. He asked to be buried in Kent, but ended up in Westminster Abbey.
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Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933 of a French father and English mother. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She worked in publishing, then journalism, becoming Literary Editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times. She has written historic and literary biographies of several Londoners including Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys. |
