Becoming Dickens : the invention of a novelist

 by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst A quiet shrewd-looking little fellow who seems to guess pretty much what he is. So wrote Carlyle about the young Charles Dickens. Douglas-Fairhurst, however, understands as Carlyle did not what an immense challenge Dickens faced in determining just what kind of creature he was. In the tangled events of Dickens' formative years refracted through his journalism, political polemics, correspondence, and early fiction readers discern the emerging identity of Victorian England's greatest novelist. The Pickwick Papers looms especially large in this narrative of self-discovery, as Dickens decisively reveals himself in the amusing, verbally inventive, protean, and remarkably autobiographical character, Sam Weller. Though enthusiastic public response to Weller bolsters Dickens' confidence, the writer struggles with the perils of notoriety, finally finding his authorial poise through the unlikely task of editing the memoirs of the great clown Joseph Grimaldi. Manifest in Dickens' decision to use his own name for the first time on the title page of Oliver Twist, that poise profoundly reshapes British literature. A convincing portrait of budding genius. --Booklist (Check Catalog)