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A review by jasonfurman
Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
4.0
In 1855, Charles Dickens formally withdrew from the formal list of law students, permanently giving up the idea of a stable career in the law. At the time he was already the most famous novelist in England, the author of The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Bleak House.
This fact captures what appears to be intended as the thesis of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Becoming Dickens. The book is intended as a counterweight to what might be called the Whig history of Dickens, the inevitable march from Sketches by Box to the Pickwick Papers all the way through to completing the first half of The Mystery of Edwin Drood before his death. Instead, Douglas-Fairhurst focuses on the first 26 years of Dickens’ life, ending in 1838 when he first signed a novel with the name “Charles Dickens.”
The thesis is that before Dickens settled into his role as novelist, he pursued a number of other potential careers. Douglas-Fairhurst zooms in on several of these, starting with the blacking factory, as a clerk, in a law office, as a parliamentary reporter, and even after his current trajectory started, branching off into writing plays, editing memoirs, etc.
Every single page of the book is interesting and insightful, very light on the biography and heavy on the literary criticism – either how events were later reflected in the multiplicity of Dickens’ or deeper dives into some of the early individual pieces, like the first story Dickens wrote, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk.” Every chapter works as a unified essay.
But the chapter’s don’t add up to a book that supports the thesis or provides a completely original insight into Dickens life. In part this is because Dickens became a hugely popular writer at age 24 so there really were not a lot of roads not taken. In part, this is because Dickens continued to restlessly follow multiple paths his entire life, as an editor, public speaker and amateur dramatist, among other vocations. And in part all of this has been well told before, by Michael Slater and others.
Becoming Dickens is still an excellent book. Just not quite as original or proven as the premise it sets up.
This fact captures what appears to be intended as the thesis of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Becoming Dickens. The book is intended as a counterweight to what might be called the Whig history of Dickens, the inevitable march from Sketches by Box to the Pickwick Papers all the way through to completing the first half of The Mystery of Edwin Drood before his death. Instead, Douglas-Fairhurst focuses on the first 26 years of Dickens’ life, ending in 1838 when he first signed a novel with the name “Charles Dickens.”
The thesis is that before Dickens settled into his role as novelist, he pursued a number of other potential careers. Douglas-Fairhurst zooms in on several of these, starting with the blacking factory, as a clerk, in a law office, as a parliamentary reporter, and even after his current trajectory started, branching off into writing plays, editing memoirs, etc.
Every single page of the book is interesting and insightful, very light on the biography and heavy on the literary criticism – either how events were later reflected in the multiplicity of Dickens’ or deeper dives into some of the early individual pieces, like the first story Dickens wrote, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk.” Every chapter works as a unified essay.
But the chapter’s don’t add up to a book that supports the thesis or provides a completely original insight into Dickens life. In part this is because Dickens became a hugely popular writer at age 24 so there really were not a lot of roads not taken. In part, this is because Dickens continued to restlessly follow multiple paths his entire life, as an editor, public speaker and amateur dramatist, among other vocations. And in part all of this has been well told before, by Michael Slater and others.
Becoming Dickens is still an excellent book. Just not quite as original or proven as the premise it sets up.