John Forster, a Literary Life
John Forster, a Literary Life

Author: James A. Davies

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780389203919

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This is the first substantial book about Forster's life. Drawing upon much unpublished material, Davies describes Forster's career as a man of letters and presents detailed studies of his many important friendships and professional activities. The author also breaks new ground in discussing Forster's work as a journalist, historian, and literary biographer. Contents: Part One: Early Life and Influential Friends. Newcastle to London. Leigh Hunt. Charles Lamb. Bulwer, Macready; Part Two: The Man of Letters I: The literary life. Literature's friend. Friendship's variations 1834-1855. Withdrawal and return; Part Three: Man of Letters II: Four Friendships. Robert Browning. Landor. Dickens. Carlyle; Part Four: Man of Letters III: Professional Concerns. Journalist. Historian. Literary biographer; Postscript; Bibliography (including Forster's mainly anonymous reviews)^R.

The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens
The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens

Author: Helena Kelly

Publisher: Icon Books

Published: 2023-11-02

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1837731136

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Think you already know the story of Charles Dickens' life? Think again. Almost everything you're familiar with was first mentioned in an authorised biography written by Dickens' close friend John Forster 150 years ago. It's the version of events that Dickens himself chose to make public, and newly accessible archives reveal that it's crammed with gaps, inconsistencies, and outright lies. There's the sister whose existence Dickens kept secret and the Jewish relations whose faith he strove to conceal. There's plagiarism, fraud, and suicide. And that's only for starters. Helena Kelly, author of the acclaimed Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, retells Dickens' story from his childhood to his deathbed, uncovers the truths he tried to keep hidden, and offers a fresh - and deeply troubling - perspective on the man who remains one of Britain's best-known novelists. You won't be able to look at him - or his work - in the same way again.

The Mediterranean Passion
The Mediterranean Passion

Author: John Pemble

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2015-07-16

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0571310257

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'The only remarkable thing people can tell of their doings these days is that they have stayed at home', declared George Eliot in 1869. In Victorian and Edwardian Britain travel became the rage. The middle classes and the aristocracy seemed in a constant flux of arrival and departure, their luggage festooned with foreign labels. The revolution in transport made this possible. The Mediterranean Passion describes how the British travelled to the South and where they went. Drawing on what these travellers wrote, and what was written for them, it enriches our understanding of the Victorians and Edwardians by exploring the medical, religious, sexual and aesthetic dimensions of their journeys and illuminates an important but neglected aspect of British social and cultural history. '... combines scholarship with charm ... It could easily be taken to the Mediterranean on a holiday and read with pleasure on a sunny beach or in the shade of a church.' Asa Briggs, Financial Times 'I was impressed not merely by the range of his erudition - historical, cultural, literary, topographical, medical et al. - and by the depth of his enquiries into his subject but by the subtlety and refinement of his prose. He deals with very elusive, complex and culturally contradictory matters, upon which few, if any, could arrive at persuasive generalisations; yet he does so throughout the book, while his conclusion is a marvel of judgment, excelling even what his preceded.' David Selbourne (author of The Principle of Duty) The Mediterranean Passion was the joint winner of the 1987 Wolfson Literary Award for History.