Charles Dickens

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 4

Charles Dickens

A new editinn of John Forster's “The Life of Charles Dickens” is published in two volumes by J. M. Dent. The new edition is based on the “Life” which was published in Everyman’s Library in 1927. (Forster’s work was completed four years after Dickens died in 1870.) But the new edition is extended considerably beyond the Everyman edition by revisions and new material provided by A. J. Hoppe. These include additional author's footnotes (166 in number) which were] left out of the Everyman edi-* tion, a better index, and some 20 pages of notes comprehending research and publication on Dickens’s life since the Everyman edition was annot-i ated by J W. T. Ley in 1928. I Dame Una Pope-Hennessy wrote in her biography in 1945 that “the first and greatest book on Charles Dickens was written 70 years ago,” and while this is still true, research and a vast library of] books that have been ■ Titten ] about Dickens leave a great deal to be added to John Forster’s life of his friend. This] involves such matters as Dickens’s separation from his wife and his friendship with Ellen Ternan, and the quarrel, between Thackeray and Yates in which Dickens was so deeply and unhappily involved. In ! his Notes, Mr Hoppe summarises evidence and con-i elusions reached in later works, and so offers an appendage to Forster's “Life”] will be valued.