Title: A good brief account of Dickens
Review: For those who want to spend two weeks leaning about Dickens, Peter Ackroyd's book is really excellent. However if you do not have that kind of time, this work by Jane Smiley is excellent. Whoever marries the authors to the subjects should be commended. Jane Smiley is a best-selling author. Who better to write on the foremost novelist during the high noon of the novel as a medium?This book provided an excellent overview not only of the life of Dickens, which can be summed up as "poor boy makes good," but also the novels themselves. I do not agree with some of Jane Smiley's criticism ("Pickwick Papers" is a good read, despite what she says), but by and large she is on target with a great deal of what she has to say.
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