Dickens: , Volume 1

Front Matter....Pages i-xxix
‘My Dear Collins’: a Message from Novelist to Biographer....Pages 1-2
‘A Terrible Boy to Read’....Pages 2-4
‘Not Particularly Studious’....Pages 4-9
A Smart Young Clerk....Pages 9-13
Prospects Improving....Pages 13-13
The Fastest Shorthand Reporter in London....Pages 14-16
Courtship and Young Marriage....Pages 16-17
Boz Emergent; or, the Young Lion....Pages 17-21
The Young Novelist at Work and Play....Pages 21-24
‘Completely outside Philosophy, Science, etc.’....Pages 25-28
‘Dear Dickens is a Most Extraordinary Man!’....Pages 28-32
Dickens on Holiday (1840) and Afterwards....Pages 33-41
Yankee Inquisitiveness Pays Off....Pages 41-44
Another Yankee Interviewer, 1841....Pages 44-47
‘A Frank Cordiality, and a Friendly Clasp’....Pages 48-51
America 1842....Pages 51-56
His American Secretary in 1842....Pages 57-61
Maddest Nonsense and Tragic Depths....Pages 61-64
A French View in 1843....Pages 65-66
‘Abominably Vulgar’, but ‘at the Top of the Tree’....Pages 67-70
‘No Nonsense’ about Him....Pages 70-71
A ‘Manly Man’, a ‘Hearty Man’....Pages 71-74
Editor of the Daily News....Pages 75-80
Views from the Castle....Pages 80-83
Dickens’s ‘Dearest Meery’ Remembers....Pages 83-86
Beaming Eye, Bank Balance, and Babies....Pages 87-90
Splendid Strolling....Pages 90-96
In the Chair....Pages 96-104
The Company He Kept....Pages 105-110
Dickens in Conversation: ‘A Demon of Delightfulness’....Pages 110-119
Working Habits....Pages 119-126
The Pace of Serialisation....Pages 126-129
Dickens and his Parents....Pages 129-131
The Eldest Son’s Recollections....Pages 131-140
One Apart from All Other Beings....Pages 141-150
‘I Loved Him for His Faults’....Pages 151-155
‘The Kindest and Most Considerate of Fathers’....Pages 155-158
‘His Lovable and Great-Hearted Nature’....Pages 158-165
Charming with Children, Usually....Pages 165-176
‘That Curious Life-giving Power of His’....Pages 176-179