Book summary

Peter Ackroyd's unorthodox biography alternates his own critical commentary on Dickens's life and work with semi-fictional encounters between himself and Dickens, and between Dickens and other writers. Ackroyd's mix of past and present, fact and fiction, sheds light not only on Dickens but on Ackroyd himself and his world.

Media reviews

"The first Dickens biography was by his closest friend, John Forester, whose book appeared in 1874. Dozens of biographies have been written since then, but one of the best is..."Dickens" by Peter Ackroyd....'Dickens' remains his masterpiece: a vast, 1,195 page book, as capacious and varied as its subject. Ackroyd has a novelist's gift for pacing, and this biography rips along....I can think of no biography that provides a better sense of an author's working life....One puts down 'Dickens' with a rich, complete sense of the writer's life and mind, and with some feeling for how he might have written so many astonishing books."