Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography and scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft,...

A tale of two turbulent love affairs plays out amidst a tangled web of wealth, corruption, passion and betrayal in 1860s London.

Local MP and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Louisa and Tom, in the utilitarian fashion, stressing reason and fact and dismissing imagination and emotion. Under his influence, Louisa grows cold while Tom turns to a secret life of drinking and gambling. To be nearer her brother, Louisa accepts an offer of marriage from his boss, the self-mad, self-important banker Josiah Bounderby, though she does not love him. But soon finds...

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence. Ashton...

Edward Dickens, the tenth child of author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself - or at least fall out of the public eye. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various...