From a bitter childhood mired in poverty and hard work to a career as the most acclaimed and best-loved writer in the English-speaking world, Charles Dickens had a life as tumultuous as any he created in his teeming novels of life in Victorian England. And no one has captured the rich texture of this life as colorfully and persuasively as Fred Kaplan in this acclaimed biography. Thoroughly researched, Dickens provides an absorbing and perceptive account of its subject as a singularly complex man and a consummate artist, offering readers new insights into Dickens' - and literature's - greatest works, such as Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist.