At the age of 45, [Dickens] decided that his wife no longer deserved his love, and he made her leave their home--her youngest children were then 9 and 6. "To think of the poor matron after 22 years of marriage going away out of her house!" said Thackeray at the time. The chattering classes probably knew about it, but Dickens continued to write his books celebrating the healing of families, the love of young sweethearts and the creation of new homes - while his discarded wife tried to preserve her early letters from her husband in order to prove to the children he tried to estrange from her that there was indeed a time when her husband had loved her.But the question remains: does it matter if novelists are good people? Hopefully not, because if so, we are down to way fewer books to read, world.
4.13.2010
Charles Dickens: May have been a dick
So, rumor has it that Charles Dickens was not always so nice. To quote:
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I knew there was a reason I couldn't read him!
ReplyDeleteI think it's best not to know too much about any writer. It could hurt your enjoyment of their work. A lot of them had/have difficult lives but maybe that's what drives them to write such wonderful stories.
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