Volume 15, Number 6 · October 8, 1970
Irresistible Dickens
By John Bayley
The World of Charles Dickens
by Angus Wilson
Viking, 320, 200 illustrations, 40 color plates pp., $12.95
Dickens the Craftsman: Strategies of Presentation
edited by Robert B. Partlow Jr.
Southern Illinois University, 240 pp., $6.95
The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence
by Raymond Williams
Oxford, 224 pp., $5.00
Dickens 1970
edited by Michael Slater
Stein & Day, 241 pp., $7.95
Charles Dickens' Uncollected Writings from Household Words
edited by Harry Stone
Indiana University, 2 volumes, 748, 132 illustrations pp., $25.00
The Moral Art of Dickens (to be published later this fall)
by Barbara Hardy
Oxford, 150 pp., $6.00
The Inimitable Dickens
by A.E. Dyson
St. Martin's, 303 pp., $8.95
A hundred years after his death Dickens's reputation stands higher than ever before and he is generally recognized as the greatest creative force in English after Shakespeare. Would the pair be surprised to find themselves on this pinnacle? Tolstoy and Goethe knew what was in store for them, or what ought to be in store for them, as they knew everything else about their powerful personalities; but very likely Shakespeare and Dickens rarely reflected on their future status: they had neither the time nor the inclination, nor enough sense of their persons. In spite of the countless portraits and photographs it is not easy to see what Dickens looked like—the 'countenance clear as steel' that Carlyle admired melts into unrecapturable shapes which suggest only the actor of a given moment, playing the part of author at his desk, public figure, or Christmas uncle. We can imagine Shakespeare acting on the stage as we can imagine Dickens acting off it, but Dickens as Dickens is no more credible than Shakespeare as Shakespeare. Their proper existence lies in their creations, and nowhere else.
Review, 3531 words
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