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What the Dickens!
Feb 06, 2012 • 0 Comment(s)
A post to celebrate the birth of literary master Charles Dickens born 200 years ago- Feb 7, 2012! 
We have two wonderful books by Frances Lincoln. First up is Charles Dickens: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom. This beautifully and entertainingly illustrated 48 page picture book vividly dramatizes his life, beginning with his birth in Portsmouth and early childhood near the docks in Chatham, and follows the young Charles through the hardship of working in a blacking factory at the age of 10 to his years at school and his early career as a reporter.
"Its verve and wit are infectious... a wonderful, enduring introduction for young readers." - The New York Times Book Review
Second up is Charles Dickens At Home by Hilary Macaskill with photographs by Graham Salter. This book tracks the places Dickens lived, from his Portsmouth birthplace and childhood home in Chatham to his last home back in Kent, at Gad's Hill Place in Rochester. The book also covers his travels in England and abroad, where the locations provided the settings in his novels, such as Nicholas Nickleby's Yorkshire and in the East Anglia of David Copperfield, Charles Dickens's most autobiographical novel. Above all, it is London, where he lived in different homes for the majority of his life, which is so identified with Dickens and with his fiction.
"A tale of more than two cities, this home-bio serves up lively detail on the many homes Mr. D loved and used as inspiration for settings in his novels. Personal letters and broad research tell of a fastidious serial renovator who quickly moved up the Victorian property ladder." -The National Post
Both are available at fine bookstores everywhere.