The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete

by John Forster

John Forster met Charles Dickens in 1836, when both were twenty-four, and remained his closest friend, adviser and literary executor until the novelist's death in 1870. His Life of Charles Dickens, published in three volumes between 1872 and 1874 and complete here, is built on their correspondence and on the autobiographical fragment Dickens gave him, which revealed for the first time the months the boy had spent pasting labels in a blacking warehouse while his father sat in a debtors' prison. Forster follows the writing of each book, the American tours, the amateur theatricals, the public readings, and the separation from Catherine Dickens, which he treats with discretion. It is still the foundation of every later biography. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.