Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

June 1, 2012
Callow (My Life in Pieces, 2011, etc.) rehearses the life of Dickens with a sharp spotlight on the importance of the theater and of performance both in Dickens' life and in his fiction. The author is a front-row fan who has read Dickens' works repeatedly and whose admiration for his subject glistens on every page. It's hard not to admire the Dickens appearing here, a man whose Promethean production and energy make Trollope-Updike-Oates look a tad slothful. Writer of serial novels (he was producing The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist simultaneously), creator of the most beloved Christmas story outside the Gospels, editor of his own literary magazines, performer of his own works, husband (not an attentive one), father of 10, philanthropist...all in an age when rail travel was a novelty and writers still used that old-fashioned word processor, a pen. Callow generally follows the traditional narrative line of Dickens' life (with emphasis on his early and never-ending interest in theater), chronicling his time in the blacking factory, his indigent father, his schooling (very little), his rise in the world of letters, his friendships (literary and otherwise) and his enormous, trans-Atlantic celebrity. Callow doesn't ignore--though he does diminish a bit--Dickens' very human failures: his long affair with actress Ellen Ternan, his harsh treatment of his wife and his petulance and even pomposity in his dealings with publishers. But Callow's greatest achievements are his analysis of Dickens' prodigious thespian skills and his generation of an absolute love affair with his readership. The author shows us the vast, adoring crowds and tallies the enormous psychic and physical costs of Dickens' myriad performances and celebrity. Callow makes us wish we'd been in those crowds to watch this astonishing magician weave his literary spells.

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Starred review from June 15, 2012

Of the several books published this year in honor of the bicentennial of Dickens's birth, this by Callow is in many ways the best because it has all the gusto that a popular biography of Dickens--a man who "could do nothing by halves"--should possess, along with the sound understanding of, and insight into, its subject's life. Callow (My Life in Pieces) is an actor with writing in his blood; Dickens was a writer who encountered the theater as one of his earliest and deepest loves. Dickens wrote for the theater with little success; his casts of characters and their memorable turns of phrase, the drama and comedy, went best into his fiction. Here is the life familiar to Dickens's devoted readers, but expressed with marvelous brio and an instinctive recognition of this man who demonstrated an empathy for the urban unempowered while ruthlessly driving to maintain his own dominance and control in personal and professional terms. VERDICT The best biography for Dickens newcomers and a wonderful read for all.--Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2012
My legs swell so, wrote Dickens in 1851, with standing on the stage for hours together, that my stockings won't come off. In this insightful biographical study, Callow, a seasoned actor and director, shows how the theatricality that caused Dickens' legs to swell also vastly enlarged his literary art. Readers see the unfolding of Dickens' dramatic impulses as they watch the seven-year-old boy who beguiled pubgoers with his lively recitations mature into the remarkable thespian who dazzled Soho audiences with his comedic-to-tragic versatility. Callow illuminates the symbiotic relationship between Dickens' theatrical enthusiasms and his authorial genius; for instance, Dickens' worshipful admiration for the actor Charles Mathews, master of the one-act farce, pervades The Pickwick Papers, and Sydney Carton, in A Tale of Two Cities, reprises characteristics of a Ben Jonson character Dickens played on stage. Because of a fundamental creative fusion, Dickens' instincts as an actor animate the vibrant characters of his novels, and his genius as a novelist informs his unforgettable performances as an actor. Nowhere is this fusion more evident than in Dickens' irresistible readings of his own fiction, as when delivering The Chimes with such emotion that he left listeners sobbing. Itself as enchanting as a well-directed stage play, this narrative will delight any lover of Dickens.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)