The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens by Pete Orford (review)

Reviewed by: The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens by Pete Orford Catherine Quirk (bio) Pete Orford. The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens. Wiley–Blackwell, 2023. Pp. vii + 269. 23. 95. ISBN 978-1-119-69745-9 (pb). Pete Orford opens his new biography of The Inimitable by stating, quite simply, that "Charles Dickens is a contradiction" (1). This contradictoriness, it turns out, forms the keynote of the book's organization, and of Orford's illuminating approach to what might otherwise be seen as the almost redundant task of writing yet another biography of Dickens. Embracing the potential of contradiction, Orford uses the works as windows onto aspects of Dickens's life, using literary analysis rather than straightforward biography to showcase the range of Dickens's experiences. Orford's biography is thus able to provide readers – both those new to Dickens and those who are already familiar with his life and works – with broader coverage of both than many previous biographies have been able to do. End Page 405 As Orford goes on to note early in the text, other biographies "highlight and suppress different aspects of Dickens, " leaving readers "with a curiously ambiguous portrait" (1). In introducing his biography through a sort of crash course in Dickensian life-writing, Orford highlights that "the most recurrent theme across Dickens biographies is the consistent sense of inconsistency, that there is no single portrayal of Dickens which any writer can hope to define" (2). And so Orford, quite ingeniously, does not make this attempt. Instead, the biography is organized around a series of case studies, creating a roughly chronological look at the intersection of Dickens's life and works. The biography, then, reads more like a series of capsule literary analyses than a biography: the reader is provided with ways of reading, rather than facts of life, with modes of analysis rather than detailed chronologies. The result is an innovative, approachable, and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the author's life and works, which Orford presents throughout with a conscientious balance between scholarly insight and accessible detail. The language of the text is highly approachable, easing new readers into the study of Dickens, and making more familiar readers feel just as much at home in the book as they would do in a Dickens novel. Orford makes use, for example, of the (neo-) Victorian tactic of enticing direct address, addressing (Jane Eyre-style) his "dear reader" (16), and warning (Crimson Petal-style) that "readers are … invited to keep their wits about them, and to interrogate this text in front of them no less than they would interrogate Dickens's texts" (10). The accessible, often colloquial style even stretches to a (surely intentional? ) Hamilton reference: Dickens, like the titular character of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, is at one point "caught in the eye of a hurricane, " and must "write his way out" (180). The text as a whole is as accessible as the language, catering both to new and well-traveled Dickensians. In the introduction, Orford spends five pages laying out the basic facts of Dickens's life by decade, so that readers without previous familiarity won't feel they're missing out. Many of these details return in later chapters, but in service of Orford's work to connect life and writing, rather than as pure biography. While many readers already familiar with Dickens will skim over this section, for newer readers this introductory biographical overview lays the necessary groundwork for the analytical focus of each chapter to come. The case study format allows for detailed consideration of the works, while avoiding the biographical reading Orford warns against throughout. Chapter 9, "Dickens's Literary Network, " is perhaps the strongest example of this careful balance. Building up to an analysis of the 1859 collaborative Christmas number, A Haunted House, this chapter summarizes with remarkable thoroughness – given the limited space – Dickens's accumulation of networks over his career. Orford eloquently shows how the author's early End Page 406 networking opportunities through journalism and the stage were built on to allow Dickens to situate himself at the powerful center of his later literary circle. This biographical information finds further support in the case. . .