Purchased from a book sale at my office. It looked like an interesting read (plus there are photos throughout = always a winner for me!).

This book was an amazing insight into the social mores of Victorian London (as well as those of today) - as, really, they don't seem at all too different. Nelly, a good looking, vivacious young woman from the wrong kind of family - in this instance a 'Stage' family - meets and has an affair with an older, richer, more upstanding and scholarly man.

What is amazing about this story is the almost absolute silence that all parties kept about it. Even during and after Dickens' death.

If there is anything more amazing than that it is the way in which Nelly was able to completely reinvent herself, lopping off almost ten years and marrying a respectable school teacher. Nelly's reinvention was so thorough that even her children did know the truth about her early life on the Stage, her affair with the famous Dickens or even her real age!

I'm glad that Claire Tomalin was able to trace the dim light of Nelly's life and bring her back to the centre of the stage of the history to which she belongs.

I've read Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen and thought it was brilliant. So when I saw this on the book buffet at the BC Amsterdam Convention, I grabbed it immediately.

Just as good as her bio of Jane Austen, and with the added difficulty of fighting off years of Dickens' admirers either defaming Ternan or trying to bury her existence. You will not look at Dickens the same way after this book, but you may well have a better understanding of why he couldn't write a well-rounded, psychologically full female character to save his life. As always, Tomalin tells us as much about the world in which Ternan and Dickens lived as she does about the people themselves. My edition is a later one, and has an added chapter which casts new light on the circumstances of Dickens' death. Tomalin's further investigations were spurred by the receipt of a letter she received following the book's initial publication, a letter describing a family story suggesting that Dickens did not die at Gad's Hill, but that his body had been transported there after his death. It is, of course, a story that at this juncture cannot be proved or disproved, but it is interesting to consider the steps that Tomalin took to investigate its plausibility, steps that show her to be a true scholar.

Leaving in the free book box