The Life of Charles Dickens

About this book

John Forster was Charles Dickens's closest friend, adviser and literary agent for more than thirty years, and after Dickens's death he wrote the first great biography of him. In it he revealed a secret that Dickens had told almost no one: that at twelve, when his father was imprisoned for debt, the boy was sent to work in a blacking factory, an experience that haunted him all his life. Forster quotes Dickens's own account of those months and follows his career from journalist to the most famous novelist in the world, with his travels, public readings and endless energy.

Context and significance

Forster published the three volumes between 1872 and 1874, and they remain the starting point for every life of Dickens, rich in letters and first-hand memories. The blacking factory reappears in fiction in David Copperfield, and the debtors' prison in Little Dorrit.

About the author