This review is contributed by Mads Golding, a playwright, writer, and independent scholar who focuses on Charles Dickens and the long 19th century. She is a staff writer for The Dickens Society.

Jesper Soerensen’s new book, Charles Dickens: The Stories of His Life (2023), offers a well-researched, accessible, almost encyclopedic project that could serve as a great tool for anyone who is intrigued by Dickens’s oeuvre of work, but perhaps doesn’t know where to start. It offers chronological explorations of each of Dickens’s novels, from The Pickwick Papers to The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and situates each book in Dickens’s personal life and the broader historical context in which Dickens rose to international fame.  

Remarkably, Soerensen achieves all of this while somehow managing to remain free of spoilers. He placed The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby in the context of the publishing industry, showing how the Pickwick Papers proved to be a project well suited to the rapid printing culture of the era: 

“When he began his career, this sort of publication had a low status compared to a novel in volume form, but the tremendous success of The Pickwick Papers proved an efficient way to reach a large audience. […] This form of publication caused some major difficulties for the writer. It was always a point of no return, since the book was being read as it was published, it left the author without the option of going back and making alterations.”

(Soerensen 58).

Soerensen reveals the economics behind the fast publishing schedule while also explaining why Dickens’s plotlines occasionally proved unwieldy. The habit of developing winding plots clearly continues with Nicholas Nickleby, where Soerensen reflects,

“His journey is a series of colourful but loosely connected episodes, and it is but a slight exaggeration to say that the book can be read with equal pleasure and understanding from beginning to end.”

(Soerensen 59).

Soerensen’s work often reads like a slightly sardonic Cambridge Companion. If one has read the work and agrees with the commentary, then it’s amusing. At a minimum, a disagreement with Soerensen’s assessment will invite reflection on one’s own reactions to the novel. He occasionally runs the risk, however, of deterring less experienced readers from picking up books that he feels are not worth pursuing. His description of Nicholas Nickleby highlights what he considers to be baggy writing: “This problem (nonsensical plot choices) is clearly seen in the second number of Nicholas Nickleby, where Dickens has reached the point in the story he meant to leave off with, but still has a lot of space to fill” (Soerensen 58). Soerensen’s diagnosis of verbosity for the sake of being paid by page is not inaccurate, but he seems to be holding an old novel to modern printing standards, which would have involved multiple rewrites, which Dickens (especially in the early years) did not have.

Soerensen also uses famous characters such as Mrs. Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit to explore why Dickens wrote in caricature. Mrs. Gamp is an old woman who serves as both an undertaker and a midwife. She is an excellent example of the amalgamation of Dickens’s use of physical and verbal comedy.

 “As caricature, she is a representative of a thriving class of independent ‘nurses’. At a time with no systematic qualification checks for people in the healtcare sector, opportunities, deficient in merits and morals, such as Mrs. Gamp, had their glory days.”

(Soerensen 124).

Mrs. Gamp’s profile embodies Dickens’s style of writing, utilizing the metaphor of [as he termed it in Oliver Twist] “streaky bacon,” creating a character who is tragic and funny at the same time. “As caricature, she is representative of a then thriving class of independent nurses” (Soerensen 124).

Once again, Soerensen’s book proves not only to be a good source of information on Dickens but also a good resource for information on the world that produced Dickens and his work. Soerensen uses the chapter on Nicholas Nickleby to discuss how Dickens resisted the rapid and illegal adaptations of his work, which were often performed before his serialized novels were even finished. The book also neatly addresses why Dickens wrote using caricatures for both comic and dramatic effect, depending on the situation. Antony Trollope observed, “the artist who paints for the millions must use glaring colours” (Rohan). 

Soerensen is by no means the first critic to note the dramatic shift in tone after Bleak House. The theatrically comic moments in Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield stand in such sharp contrast to the more brooding, bitingly satirical Bleak House, and Little Dorritt, that it almost feels as if Dickens is writing his way through an emotional shift from that of a snappy social critic, to an international superstar with rather more emotional baggage.  

It’s clear that Soerensen enjoys Dickens’s work enormously; he has produced a very versatile piece of non-fiction that would be useful and entertaining both in and out of the scholastic environment.   

Works Cited  

Rohan, Amanda. “Complete Appreciation of the Usual”–Reading Anthony Trollope: Open Letters Monthly, October 2009  https://rohanmaitzen.com/research/open-letters-monthly-archive/second-glance-reading-anthony-trollope/.

Soerensen, Jesper. Charles Dickens: The Stories of his Life. London, Olympia Publishers, 2023.