Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalinis an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 June 1933
writers
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.
perhaps
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.
life
I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
badly behaved economic hope life position power
I've behaved badly in my life. I hope I haven't behaved as badly as Dickens! In a way, if you're a woman, you're not in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.
coming dickens forward joined nor party political power rightly saw writer
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction.
dickens sons
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
achieved childhood children country house men might older rather regret romantic saw six spent suppose vision
Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
dickens great multiple
After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.
dickens felt hated spoke worked
As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.
I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.
history interested people present relate trying understand
I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.
conditions everybody
In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.
forgotten life looked mary money notes rights small sold sum until
I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of Mary Wollstonecraft: there was a lunch, a contract, a small sum of money, then nothing.