Dickens the Enchanter

Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller

Dickens the Enchanter

Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller

Peter Conrad (Author)

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Description

'Dickensian is a language, not an adjective. Conrad speaks it fluently.' -- Spectator World

'Marvellous... the best book on Dickens since G.K. Chesterton's. -- A. N. Wilson, The Oldie

A kaleidoscopic investigation of Dickens's imagination and the world he created.

See Dickens as never before in this creative biography, which delves into his novels, journalistic essays and letters to reveal his strange, hilarious but obsessive personal character and the audacity of a mind that set out, as he said, to rearrange the universe.

As well as re-examining the great novels, Conrad's book probes the journalism in which Dickens reports on his risky ventures into the urban underworld. It also describes the celebrated but dangerously over-intense public readings in which, as at a seance, he allowed his most terrifying characters to take possession of him. Ultimately it reveals how the forces of creation and destruction come together in Dickens, who despite his reputation for jollity and effusive sentiment found it increasingly hard to control the madness and violence of his own self-destructive genius.

Dickens the Enchanter takes us deep into an imagination whose power and originality struck some contemporaries as godlike while others thought it demonic. If you already love Dickens, it will renew your understanding of him; if you have yet to read him, it will lure you into his astonishing, alarming, enchanted world.

Preface: A Visionary Companion
1 On Planet Dick
2 In the Family
3 In the Dark
4 Cabbalistic Words
5 The Great Creator
6 Devilkins
7 In Arabia
8 Species and Origins
9 In the Carvery
10 In the Forge
11 Arranging the Universe
12 Heroes of His Own Life
13 The So Potent Art
14 In the Crypt
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published	29 Jul 2025
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	304
ISBN	9781399409193
Imprint	Bloomsbury Continuum
Dimensions	234 x 153 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Peter Conrad

Peter Conrad is a literary critic and cultural his…

Dickensian is a language, not an adjective. Conrad speaks it fluently.

The Spectator World
If you have not read Dickens for a while – or ever – this reading of the novels will convert you. 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. It is a marvellous study, the best book on Dickens since G.K. Chesterton's, which was published in 1906.

A. N. Wilson, The Oldie
Riveting…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
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.

Independent
Conrad has published criticism so sharp you can cut your fingers on it.

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… Conrad's enthusiasm means that even readers who aren't quite sure where they are going are still likely to enjoy the journey.

The Spectator