The Friendly Dickens

Norrie Epstein-whose The Friendly Shakespeare was called spirited, informative and provocative by The New York Times-strips away the polite veneer of Victorian society to reveal Dickens's life and times in all their squalor and glory. Along with a guide to all of Dickens's works, interviews with aficionados from Patrick Stewart to biographer Phyllis Rose, eye-catching illustrations, copious quotations, a highly opinionated filmography, and informative sidebars on almost every page, you'll find answers to such questions as:

• Why are nineteenth-century novels so long?
• What was Dickens's evil hour?
• Why couldn't the Victorians resist a deathbed scene?
• How many characters populated Dickens's first novel, The Pickwick Papers?
• Why is Dickens the most popular-and the most despised-novelist in the world?

This Friendly companion to the man who called himself The Inimitable will have you running in delight to dust off your Dickens.