Dickens the Enchanter Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Peter Conrad is a cultural critic and historian, who has published more than 20 books on a wide variety of subjects and writes regularly for the Observer. He taught English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford for more than three decades and has lectured throughout the world. He lives in London and New York.<b>If you have not read Dickens for a while – or ever – this reading of the novels will convert you. </b>Reading Conrad, who for many years taught English literature at Oxford, makes you realise why so many of his hundreds of former pupils adore and praise him.
- A. N. Wilson, The Oldie
<b>Riveting</b>…Conrad plunders Dickens’s novels, essays, journalism and diaries for illuminating details that he artfully weaves together into something akin to a series of inventories.
The Times
<b>Peter Conrad is a dancer and acrobat whose brilliance, audacity and courage forever defy our ungenerous hopes of a pratfall. Nobody else can do what he does and get away with it.</b>
Independent
<b>Conrad has published criticism so sharp you can cut your fingers on it.</b>
New York Observer
There is little Conrad doesn’t notice, making his book seem less like a traditional critical account than the result of someone who has managed to get inside Dickens’s head and have a good rummage… <b>Conrad’s enthusiasm means that even readers who aren’t quite sure where they are going are still likely to enjoy the journey.</b>
The Spectator
<b>Conrad is stunningly well informed, compulsively allusive and equipped with the kind of imagination that transforms the base metal of history into pure gold</b>.
Observer
<b>If Dickens was a unique enchanter, alert to the magic as well as the misery of this world, Conrad is a charmingly bewitched conjurer of his genius.</b>
The Critic
In his new book, <b>Peter Conrad draws on a lifetime’s love of Dickens and an encyclopedic knowledge of his work </b>to celebrate the novelist’s magus power and the sheer fecundity of his imagination.
- Claire Harman, Literary Review
<b>An engrossing biography. <i>Dickens the Enchanter </i>is a treat. It offers a fresh understanding of his genius to new readers and is a highly rewarding reminder to devoted fans of Dickens of why he remains such a colossus of literature.</b>
- Martin Chilton, Independent
<b>An erudite study… Sure to please Dickens’s admirers.</b>
Publishers Weekly
<b>Exactly the kind of attention Dickens's writing demands and deserves, at once intimate and encyclopaedic. A compelling portrait of a writer who lived his work to the limit.</b>
David Trotter, Emeritus Professor of Literature, University of Cambridge
<b>An important account of an extraordinary writer who is often misread and misrepresented.</b>
Church Times