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
bad behaviour dickens faithfully love man present shock trying
When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming.
christmas dickens emerged
Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.
deny dickens fascinated record relation though
I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did.
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.
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.
love normal people quite
I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.
critic glorious literary
I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.
jane likely
I think it's about as likely Jane Austen was gay as that she was found out to be a man.
self alive young
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
past two use
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.
tired successful years
As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his mind to keep the year free of the pressure of producing monthly installments of yet another long novel.
school autumn college
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.