<div>With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, <b>Jane Smiley</b> naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as <b>Great Expectations</b> and <b>A Christmas Carol</b>. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's <b>Charles Dickens</b> is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.<br /> <br /> Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."<br /> <br /> <b>Charles Dickens</b> offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (<b>The Boston Globe</b>) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.<br /> <br /> Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.</div>