Peter Ackroyd.
Dickens
London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
1.195 pp. 19.95 ƒ77,60
DICKENS ACCORDING TO ACKROYD
Little Dorrit, in her 1857 first edition
half leather binding, weighs 1060
kilogrammes Peter Ackroyd's Charles
Dickens no less than 1720. This makes
for heavy reading. Physically speaking,
that is, since otherwise Ackroyd's half a
million words are a thoroughly
enjoyable read.
Peter Ackroyd, who seems almost as
versatile and energetic as Dickens
himself, has written a number of semi-
historical novels (labeled "post
modernist" by some critics) around
Oscar Wilde, Hawksmoor and Sir
Christopher Wren, Chatterton, and
assorted Pre-Raphaëlites, novels which
manage to evoke vividly the periods in
which they are set. He has also written
a major biography of T.S. Eliot (1984;
Dickens doesn't figure in it).
For Dickens, his latest book, Ackroyd
has done very extensive research in all
the relevant libraries. He has read all
the published and unpublished primary
material, and nearly all of the
secondary no small feat, that. The
only title I missed in the valuable
bibliography (or rather, short-title list of
"books used") is A.J. Hoppé's fine
edition of John Forster's Life of Dickens
(Dent, 2 vols., 1969) which is
particularly valuable for its extensive
notes.
Contrary to the scholarly book on T.S.
Eliot, Ackroyd's Dickens is very like a
Victorian "Life and Works" baggy
monster, its Prologue (narrating
Dickens's death) followed by thirty-five
leisurely written and chronologically
organised chapters which aim at
completeness and are replete with
descriptive passages, potted social and
political histories, imagined conversa
tions, and lots of garrulous authorial
commentary. The tone is often almost
colloquial, the style at times almost
Dickensian, blank verse rhythms and
all.
There are six intriguing interpolations,
separately numbered and set in a larger
typeface than the main body of the
text, in which Ackroyd meets Little
Dorrit, describes a bevvy of Dickens's
characters, led by Dick Swiveller and
Barnaby Rudge, on a trip to Greenwich
Fair, overhears an amusing 'True
conversation between imagined selves"
(Wilde, Chatterton, Dickens and T.S.
Eliot), reports a dreamt conversation
with his subject ('Tell me more about
myself', Dickens urges); and an
important last one in which an
imagined reader questions Ackroyd,
who tries to forestall, rather unsucces
sfully one fears, any criticism of his
scant use of footnotes and of his
abundant fictionalizing method.
Embedded in this Life is some very
perceptive literary criticism. Dickens's
works are discussed at length, and
there are frequent eye-openers. I had
never realized (to my shame, I think
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