Charles Dickens: A Life (89 page)

Miller, J. Hillis, 
Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels
(Cambridge, Mass., 1958)

Nisbet, Ada B.,
Dickens and Ellen Ternan
(Berkeley, Calif., 1952)

Patten, Robert L.,
Charles Dickens and His Publishers
(Oxford, 1978)

Pope-Hennessy, Una,
Charles Dickens
(London, 1945)

Renton, Richard,
John Forster and His Friendships
(London, 1912)

Schlicke, Paul,
Dickens and Popular Entertainment
(London, 1985)

—
Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens
(Oxford, 1999)

Slater, Michael,
Charles Dickens
(New Haven, Conn., and London, 2009)

— (ed.)
The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’s Journalism
, 4 vols. (London, 1994–2000)

Vol. I,
Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers 1833–1839
(1994)

Vol. II,
‘The Amusements of the People’ and Other Papers, Reports, Essays and Reviews 1834–1851
(1996)

Vol. III,
‘Gone Astray’ and Other Papers from
Household Words 1851–1859
(1998)

Vol. IV (with John Drew),
The Uncommercial Traveller and Other Papers 1859–1870
(2000)

Storey, Gladys,
Dickens and Daughter
(London, 1939)

Tillotson, Kathleen, and Butt, John,
Dickens at Work
(London, 1957)

Tomalin, Claire,
The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
(London, 1990)

Toynbee, William (ed.),
The Diaries of William Charles Macready
(London, 1912)

Watts, Alan S.,
Dickens at Gad’s Hill
(Goring-on-Thames, 1989)

Wilson, Edmund, ‘Dickens: The Two Scrooges’ (lecture, 1939), then published in
The Wound and the Bow
(Cambridge, Mass., 1941; revised 1952)

Bates, Alan,
A Directory of Stage Coach Services 1836
(New York
,
1969)

Healey, Edna,
Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts
(London, 1978)

O’Callaghan, P. P.,
The Married Bachelor; or, Master and Man
(Dick’s Standard Plays, 313 the Strand [n.d. but 1830s]), and Peake, Richard Brinsley,
Amateurs and Actors
(London, 1818), musical farce. Both plays put on by Dickens and family in Bentinck Street in 1833

Peters, Catherine,
The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins
(London, 1991)

There are innumerable editions of Dickens, Oxford World Classics and Penguin providing some of the best value, many with introductions of high quality. The Oxford Clarendon hardback critical editions of the novels are still far from a complete set and those already published are all out of print, a sad situation.
Oliver Twist
, Kathleen Tillotson (1966),
Little Dorrit
, Harvey Peter Sucksmith (1979),
David Copperfield
, Nina Burgis (1981),
The Old Curiosity Shop
, Elizabeth M. Brennan (1997), have all been of great assistance.

My first thanks go to the Clarendon Press at Oxford, and to the editors of
The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens.
The twelve volumes are an indispensible source for anyone attempting to follow the course of Dickens’s life, and I am indebted to all its editors: Kathleen Tillotson, Madeline House, Angus Easson, Margaret Brown, Nina Burgis, K. J. Fielding and, in particular, to Graham Storey, who was a friend from my undergraduate days, and ever generous and helpful.

The Dickens House Museum has been particular supportive to me in my research, allowing me to work in their library, and I am grateful to the director, Florian Schweizer, to the curator, Fiona Jenkins, and to all the staff for making me welcome and letting me come and go whenever I needed to. Thanks also to the Trustees of the wonderful Wisbech Museum, and to its curator David Wright and his assistant Robert Bell, for allowing me to examine the manuscript of
Great Expectations
and other Dickens material held there.

Thanks to the curators and staff of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum for permission to examine manuscripts and proofs of novels by Dickens and other papers in the John Forster Collection. The London Library has been, as usual, an essential support in my research, both for supplying me with books and for giving me access to reference books on line. I am grateful also to the British Library, and to Cambridge University Library for so speedily providing me with a copy of the dramatized version of
Great Expectations
. Richard High at the Special Collections, Brotherton Library, Leeds University, kindly sent me a photocopy of a Dickens letter held there.

Warmest thanks to Tim Wright, who has lent me manuscript letters by Georgina Hogarth and Mrs Wharton Robinson (Nelly), and given me a copy of her translation of
Zermatt and the Valley of the Viège.
Also to Benedict Nightingale, for lending me his copy of
Julia Fortescue, afterwards Lady Gardner, and Her Circle
by George Martelli, a privately printed and rare book.

I am grateful to Jenny Hartley for her
Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women
, which contains many discoveries and valuable insights I have drawn on.

Thanks to Jonathan Miller for giving me a wise and illuminating tutorial on mesmerism. Also to Dr Virginia Bearn for a helpful discussion about Dickens’s health. Claire Sparrow gave me useful information about psychosis. Professor Ray Dolan, director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, generously gave time to consider Dickens’s symptoms, consulted with medical colleagues and reported on their conclusions, as well as presenting me with a clear account of vascular disease and of gout.

With astounding generosity Roy Stanbrook, Harbour Master of the Lower District of the Port of London, sailed me in his beautiful yacht, the
Meteor
, down the Medway from Chatham to Sheerness and into the Thames estuary as far as Gravesend, so that I could experience something similar to Dickens’s childhood voyages with his father, with whom he sometimes sailed in the Navy yacht from Chatham to the Pay Office at Sheerness and back, about 1820. Roy and his wife Ann were perfect hosts, and gave my husband and me an unforgettable June day on the water. My warmest thanks to them, and also to Helen Alexander, who introduced me to Roy.

Nicholas P. C. Waloff sent me fascinating information about his ancestor, Dickens’s manservant, John Thompson, which he had researched himself, for which I am grateful.

Thanks to Dickens’s descendants, Lucinda Hawksley, H. D. B. Hawksley and Mark Dickens, all of whom have been helpful to me.

Thanks to David Clegg for drawing my attention to the Jarndyce catalogue entry on Dickens’s listing of the contents of his part of his cellar at Gad’s Hill, one of his last pieces of writing, made on Monday, 6 June 1870, in a small ruled book.

Andrew Farmer has again drawn the maps, as he did for my books on Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys and Thomas Hardy: Dickens presents a particularly difficult task, and I am again indebted to him for his patience and delighted with his work.

I was especially pleased when my old friend Douglas Matthews agreed to make the index.

I have been unusually fortunate in my publishers. Tony Lacey has been my editor at Viking Penguin for almost a quarter of a century – since 1987 – and has given me support, advice and encouragement throughout these years. Over the same period I have also benefited from the knowledge and exemplary skills of my copy editor, Donna Poppy. This is the first of my books to be edited digitally, and Donna dealt with my refusal to make my corrections on-screen, explained the process and then transferred all my pencillings to her computer – a rare act of friendship.

The work of finding and dealing with illustrations was enthusiastically entered into by Tony Lacey, Ben Brusey, Donna Poppy and Claire Hamilton. Dinah Drazin once again laid out the picture sections with great skill, taking on the challenge of my wanting to cram in more than at first seemed possible.

Robert Sanders is the hero who fixed my old computer when it gave trouble and even managed to install WordPerfect into a new one, for which I am truly grateful.

Finally thanks to my husband for once again putting up with a distracted wife, and never failing in patience and kindness.

VIKING

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First published 2011

Copyright © Claire Tomalin, 2011
Maps copyright © Andrew Farmer, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted
The acknowledgements on pp. 493–5 constitute an extension of this copyright page

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ISBN: 978-0-141-97145-2