Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley
Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley
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Charles Dickens

Author: Jane Smiley

Narrator: Anna Fields

Unabridged: 6 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/10/2002

Synopsis

Of Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley says that "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels." Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic—and lionized. Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all his major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew.

About The Author

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Golden Age, the concluding volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy. She is also the author of five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.Anna Fields was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A scriptwriter for As the World Turns, she is also a successful playwright and stand-up comedian. She now lives in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ms.pegasus on March 27, 2015

Author Jane Smiley offers brevity and astute analysis in this biography of Charles Dickens from the Penguin Lives series. Its brevity (212 pages) will relieve apprehensive readers familiar with Dickens's hefty novels (DAVID COPPERFIELD runs over 800 pages). Her analysis is even more welcome. It pair......more

Goodreads review by Gary on March 01, 2015

Penguin Lives was a high-quality series of short biographies written by well-known authors who had some common ground with their subjects. I enjoyed Bobbie Ann Mason’s Elvis Presley and Tom Wicker’s George Herbert Walker Bush. Novelist Jane Smiley’s treatment of Charles Dickens is another excellent......more

Goodreads review by Michael on November 21, 2024

I have always been interested in Charles Dickens since I fell in love with his work of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. While I read his work A TALE OF TWO CITIES, I did not find it as interesting as the visitation and extreme changes in Ebenezer Scrooge. That notwithstanding I find him to be an interesting write......more

Goodreads review by Darcy on February 24, 2014

Several years ago, when I took a course entirely devoted to Dickens, I remember thinking that it would have been nice if he had died about 30 years sooner, just to spare me from any more of his writing. My opinion on this has changed, of course, but such are the feelings that his inexhaustible tome......more

Goodreads review by Steve on July 27, 2021

A few years ago, I read all fifteen of Dickens' novels in chronological order. It was an absolute delight to have done so, as it revealed to me the depth and breadth of his talent that had only been hinted at by the occasional reading of his work in my younger days. But I hadn't read an overview of......more

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