Retirement gift

Unity Books
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (31/1/2022)]

My colleagues at Massey University were kind enough to have a bit of a whip-round when I left the building (or rather the zoom-room) a couple of weeks ago now. Friday, 14th January was my official last day, if you're curious.

I have to say that I was impressed by their intuition that what would suit me best is a book-token, and their choice of locations - Unity Books in High Street - was also right on target. Where else can you go in Auckland to find "brainy stuff"? (Believe it or not, that's the label above one of the bookcases in the shop).

I won't be rude enough to reveal how much the book-token was for, but suffice it to say that it covered the four brand-new books above. They are (in alphabetical order):

Nasrullah Munshi. Kalila and Dimna. Trans. Wheeler M. Thackston. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019.

Vladimir Nabokov. Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor. Ed. Brian Boyd & Anastasia Tolstoy. 2019. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2020.

Pablo Neruda. The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition. 2017. Trans. Hardie St. Martin & Adrian Nathan West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Carol Angier. Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald. London: Bloomsbury Circus, 2021.

I guess that the nice thing about them was that - either by coincidence, or through the serendipities of personal psychology - each one of them encapsulates a strong area of interest for me:

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Nasrullah Munshi: Kalila and Dimna (2019)

The first, for instance, a new translation of a classic set of Arabic fables, adapted and transmuted from their Sanskrit originals, falls into the class of books related to the Arabian Nights, a work which fascinates me so much that not only do I maintain a website devoted to the subject, but I've also devised - and taught - an entire fiction writing course centred on the collection.

Bidpai, the Indian sage who tells the stories - hence their alternative title The Fables of Bidpai (or 'Pilpay' in French) - focussed them around two ambitious jackals, Kalila and Dimna, employed as servants by the King (a Lion). They consist of a series of intertwined beast fables designed to illustrate the pitfalls in the way of just and effective rule.

Their immediate predecessor was the Sanskrit collection The Panchatantra, also available in a variety of recensions and forms. Behind that lie the Buddhist Jātaka Tales, the Kathāsaritsāgara [Ocean of Streams of Story], and The Hitopadesha. In its turn, Kalila and Dimna would go on to influence the numerous beast fables included in the Thousand and One Nights itself.

Kalila Upbraiding Dimna (16th century)

Kalīla wa-Dimna
(c.8th century)

The Panchatantra [Pañcatantra] (c.3rd century BCE)


1. Ryder, Arthur W., trans. The Panchatantra. 1925. Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1964.
2. Edgerton, Franklin, trans. The Panchatantra. London: Allen & Unwin, 1965.
3. Visnu Sarma. The Pancatantra. Trans. Chandra Rajan. 1993. London: Penguin, 1995.
4. Olivelle, Patrick, trans. The Pañcatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.


The Jātaka Tales (c.5th century)


5. Rhys Davids, T. W. trans. Buddhist Birth-Stories (Jātaka Tales): The Commentarial Introduction Entitled Nidāna-Kathā, The Story of the Lineage. 1880. Broadway Translations. London & New York: Routledge & Dutton, 1925.
6. Cowell, E. B., ed. The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births. Trans. R. Chambers, W. H. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis & R. A. Neil, W. H. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis, E. B. Cowell & W. H. D. Rouse. 6 vols in 3. 1895-1907. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1990.


Kalīla wa-Dimna (c.8th century)


7. Benalmocaffa, Abdalá. Calila y Dimna. Introducción, traducción y notas de Marcelino Villegas. Libro de Bolsillo: Clásicos 1512. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991.
8. Kalila and Dimna: Selected Fables of Bidpai. Retold by Ramsay Wood. Introduction by Doris Lessing. 1980. London: Granada, 1982.
9. Munshi, Nasrullah. Kalila and Dimna. Trans. Wheeler M. Thackston. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019.


Somadeva (c.11th century)


10. Penzer, N. M., ed. The Ocean of Story: Being C. H. Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathā Sarit Sāgara (or Ocean of Streams of Story). 1880-87. 10 vols. London: Privately Printed for Subscribers Only by Chas. J. Sawyer Ltd., Grafton House, W.1., 1924-1928.
11. Penzer, N. M., ed. The Ocean of Story: Being C. H. Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathā Sarit Sāgara (or Ocean of Streams of Story). 1880-87. 10 vols. 1924-28. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968.
12. Somadeva. Tales from the Kathāsaritsāgara. Trans. Arshia Sattar. Foreword by Wendy Doniger. 1994. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
13. Somadeva. Océan des rivières de contes. Ed. Nalini Balbir, with Mildrède Besnard, Lucien Billoux, Sylvain Brocquet, Colette Caillat, Christine Chojnacki, Jean Fezas & Jean-Pierre Osier. Traduction des ‘Contes du Vampire’ par Louis & Marie-Simone Renou, 1963. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 438. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.


Narayana (c.12th century)


14. Chandiramani, G. L., trans. The Hitopadesha: An Ancient Fabled Classic. 1995. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1999.

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Vladimir Nabokov: Think, Write, Speak (2019)

Shortly before I went to High School in the 1970s, the revisionist teachers at Rangitoto College decided to replace the more traditional Latin and French with Russian and Indonesian - more practical choices, or so they thought, for the contemporary world.

I never studied Indonesian, but I did learn Russian - along with French, which had fortunately survived their cull. I wouldn't say that I learnt it well, but I can follow it a bit, and I can certainly manage Cyrillic letters, which are actually the easiest part of the whole business. The complexity of Russian grammar was certainly challenging, but probably no more so than Latin would have been.

The abiding result of all that is a fascination with Russian literature and culture, which has manifested itself in endless porings over such 'Silver Age' writers as Mandel'stam and Pasternak, as well as the more obvious Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy. Nabokov has never been one of my main heroes, but his brilliance as a bilingual commentator as well as a writer makes him an inevitable subject of interest for me.

Brian Boyd's numerous books on the subject have (I suspect) all made their way into my collection by now. His two-volume biography is, of course, paramount, and - while it did come as a bit of a surprise to discover just how new material remained to be collected in the book above - I certainly welcome this new addition.

Giuseppe Pino: Vladimir Nabokov (1960s)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
(1899-1977)

Collections:


1. The Portable Nabokov. 1968. Ed. Page Stegner. Viking Compass Edition. New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1971.
2. Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight / Bend Sinister / Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. 1941, 1947, 1951. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 87. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.
3. Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire / Lolita: A Screenplay. 1955, 1957, 1962, 1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 88. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.
4. Novels 1969-1974: Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle / Transparent Things / Look at the Harlequins!. 1969, 1972, 1974. Ed. Brian Boyd. The Library of America, 89. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.

Novels:


5. Mary: A Novel. [‘Машенька’, 1926]. Trans. Michael Glenny in collaboration with the Author. 1970. A Fawcett Crest Book. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1971.
6. King, Queen, Knave. [‘Король, дама, валет’, 1928]. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the Author. 1968. London: Panther Books, 1970.
7. The Defence. [‘Защита Лужина’, 1930]. Trans. Michael Scammell in collaboration with the Author. 1964. Panther Books Ltd. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1973.
8. Glory. [‘Подвиг’, 1932]. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov. 1971. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
9. The Eye. [‘Соглядатай’, 1932]. Trans. by the Author. 1965. London: Panther Books Ltd., 1968.
10. Laughter in the Dark. [‘Камера Обскура’, 1933]. Trans. by the Author. 1938. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
11. Despair. [‘Отчаяние’, 1934]. Trans. by the Author. 1937 & 1965. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
12. Invitation to a Beheading. [‘Приглашение на казнь’, 1936]. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the Author. 1959. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
13. The Gift. [‘Дар’, 1938]. Trans. Michael Scammell with the collaboration of the Author. 1963. London: Panther Books Ltd., 1966.
14. The Enchanter. [‘Волшебник’, 1939]. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov. 1985. Picador. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1986.
15. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. 1941. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
16. Bend Sinister. 1947. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974.
17. Lolita. 1955. A Corgi Book. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1965.
18. The Annotated Lolita. 1955. Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. 1970. Rev. ed. 1991. Vintage Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1991.
19. Pnin. 1957. Penguin Books 1491. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960.
20. Pale Fire. 1962. A Corgi Book. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1964.
21. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
22. The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun). Ed. Dmitri Nabokov. 2009. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.

Stories:


23. Nabokov's Dozen: Thirteen Stories. 1958. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1959.
24. Nabokov's Quartet. 1966. London: Panther Books, 1969.
25. A Russian Beauty and Other Stories. 1973. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
26. Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories. 1975. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
27. Details of a Sunset and Other Stories. 1976. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994.
28. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. 1995. Vintage International. New York: Random House, Inc., 1997.

Plays:


29. The Waltz Invention: A Play in Three Acts. [‘Izobretenie Val'sa’, 1938]. Trans. 1966. A Pocket Cardinal Edition. New York: Pocket Books, 1967.
30. The Man from the USSR and Other Plays. With Two Essays on the Drama. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov. Bruccoli Clark. San Diego & New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1984.

Poetry & Translation:


31. Aleksandr Pushkin. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary. Revised Edition. Trans. Vladimir Nabokov. 1964 & 1975. Bollingen Series LXXII. 4 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
    1. Translator's Introduction / Eugene Onegin: The Translation
    2. Commentary on Preliminaries and Chapters One to Five
    3. Commentary on Chapters Six to Eight, "Onegin's Journey, " and "Chapter Ten" / Appendixes
    4. Index / Evgeniy Onegin: Reproduction of the 1837 Edition
32. Aleksandr Pushkin. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary. Revised Edition. Trans. Vladimir Nabokov. 1964 & 1975. Paperback Edition in Two Volumes. 1981. Bollingen Series LXXII. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
    1. Translator’s Introduction / Eugene Onegin: The Translation
    2. Commentary and Index
33. Poems and Problems. 1970. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972.
34. Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry. Ed. Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin. Introduction by Brian Boyd. Harcourt, Inc. Orlando, Florida: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2008.
35. Collected Poems. Ed. Thomas Karshan. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov. 2012. London: Penguin, 2013.

Non-fiction:


36. Nikolai Gogol. 1944. Oxford Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
37. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
38. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. 1951, 1967, 1998. Introduction by Brian Boyd. Everyman's Library, 188. London: David Campbell Publishers Limited, 1999.
39. Strong Opinions. 1973. Vintage International. New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 1990.
40. Lectures on Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Introduction by John Updike. 1980. Picador. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1983.
41. Lectures on Russian Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. 1981. Picador. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1983.
42. Lectures on Don Quixote. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Foreword by Guy Davenport. 1983. A Harvest / HBJ Book. Bruccoli Clark. San Diego, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1984.
43. Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings. Ed. Brian Boyd & Robert Michael Pyle. Trans. Dmitri Nabokov. Allen Lane. London: The Penguin Press, 2000.
44. Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor. Ed. Brian Boyd & Anastasia Tolstoy. 2019. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2020.

Letters:


45. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940-1971. Ed. Simon Karlinsky. 1979. Harper Colophon Books. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1980.
46. Selected Letters, 1940-1977. Ed. Dmitri Nabokov & Matthew J. Bruccoli. 1989. London: Vintage, 1991.

Secondary:


47. Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. 1990. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990.
48. Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. 1991. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.
49. Boyd, Brian. Stalking Nabokov: Selected Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
50. Field, Andrew. Nabokov: His Life in Part. 1977. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1977.
51. Field, Andrew. VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. 1967, 1977 & 1986. A Queen Anne Press Book. London: Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 1987.
52. Quennell, Peter, ed. Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute. His Life, His Work, His World. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1979.
53. Schiff, Stacy. Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). 1999. Picador. London: Macmillan Pubishers Ltd., 2000.

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Pablo Neruda: The Complete Memoirs (2021)

The third book on the list takes me back to a vital part of my life: the four years I spent at Edinburgh University, working on my Doctorate on Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day.

Catchy title, huh? Agonising over the precise wording of the subtitle, the selection of authors, and (of course) of so curious a choice of subject-matter in the first place, were all the part of the general atmosphere of tension which accompanied my years in Graduate School.

Not that I didn't have fun, too. Edinburgh is a delightful city to live in, and it's a cultural treat just to walk around its streets. I got to know it pretty well - or so I thought - during those years. Even now I could navigate it blindfold.

As far as my studies go, I guess that the residue they've left behind is mostly just a love for Latin American literature in general. I picked up a reading knowledge of Spanish while I was there - enough for a nodding acquaintance with the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Octavio Paz. Pablo Neruda, too. I was blown away by parts of his epic Canto General (1950).

This new edition of his memoirs probably adds little to the picture given by the posthumous Confieso que he vivido (1974), but then you never know: in any case, for a completist such as myself, it was a necessary purchase.

Pablo Neruda (1963)

Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto ['Pablo Neruda']
(1944-2001)

Poetry:


1. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. [‘20 Poemas de amor y una Canción desesperada’, 1924]. Trans. W. S. Merwin. 1969. Cape Editions. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.
2. Residencia en la tierra. 1933, 1935. Ed. Hernán Loyola. Letras Hispanicas, 254. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1987.
3. Residence on Earth. [‘Residencia en la tierra’: I, 1933; II, 1935; III, 1947]. Trans. Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions Press, 1973.
4. Canto General. 1950. Biblioteca de Bolsillo. Barcelona; Editorial Seix-Barral, 1983.
5. Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems. 1947. Trans. 1950. Introduction by Christopher Perriam. Illustrated by José Venturelli. London: The Journeyman Press Ltd., 1988.
6. Canto General: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. [‘Canto General’, 1950]. Trans. Jack Schmitt. Introduction by Roberto González Echevarría. Latin American Literature and culture, 7. 1991. A Centennial Book. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
7. Extravagaria: A Bilingual Edition. 1958. Trans. Alastair Reid. Cape Poetry Paperbacks. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972.
8. 100 Love Sonnets. [‘Cien sonetos de amor’, 1960]. Trans. Stephen Tapscott. Texas Pan American Series. 1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
9. Fully Empowered: A Bilingual Edition. [‘Plenos poderes’, 1962]. Trans. Alastair Reid. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1976.
10. Isla Negra: A Notebook. A Bilingual Edition. [‘Memorial de Isla Negra’, 1964]. Afterword by Enrico Mario Santí. Trans. Alastair Reid. 1981. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1982.
11. Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Ed. & trans. Ben Belitt. Introduction by Luis Monguió. 1961. An Evergreen Book. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1963.
12. Selected Poems: A Bi-lingual Edition. Ed. Nathaniel Tarn. Trans. Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, & Nathaniel Tarn. 1970. Introduction by Jean Franco. Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
13. The Book of Questions. [‘El libro de las preguntas’, 1974]. Trans. William O'Daly. 1991. A Kage-An Book. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2001.
14. A Basic Anthology. Ed. Robert Pring-Mill. Dolphin Books. Oxford: The Dolphin Book Co. Ltd., 1975.
15. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Ed. Ilan Stavans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Plays:


16. Splendor and Death of Joaquín Murieta. [‘Fulgor y Muerte de Joaquín Murieta’, 1966]. Trans. Ben Belitt. 1972. Noonday Press. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.

Prose:


17. Hacia la Ciudad Espléndida / Toward the Splendid City: Nobel Lecture. 1972. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974.
18. Memoirs. [‘Confieso que he vivido: Memorias’, 1974]. Trans. Hardie St. Martin. 1977. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
19. Passions and Impressions. [‘Para nacer he nacido’, 1978]. Ed. Matilde Neruda & Miguel Otero Silva. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1983.
20. The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition. 2017. Trans. Hardie St. Martin & Adrian Nathan West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

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Carol Angier: Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald (2021)

Which brings us to the last (though certainly not least) of these books: a recent biography of German writer W. G. Sebald by Carol Angier, author of equally impressive lives of Primo Levi and Jean Rhys.

Recently I had the experience of co-supervising a Doctoral student who was working on Sebald's novel Austerlitz, and it was very interesting to revisit it in detail, and to realise how large an influence it had had on my thinking, even though I'd only read it once, many years before.

When the Sikh writer Jaspreet Singh was staying with us a few years ago, too, I recall that the word 'Sebaldian' was a frequent feature of his conversation. He was trying to accomplish a shift to a similarly half-scholarly, half-personal mode of narration, and while his ostensible subject was the German minimalist Robert Walser, it was Sebald alone who seemed to offer a way forward.

My interest in German writing goes back long before I ever actually studied the language. In fact, a good deal of the motivation to do so came from my desire to get closer to authors such as Kafka or Rilke (or, later, Paul Celan) whom I could only dimly make out through the dark glass of overlapping translations. The bilingual Sebald probably got as close as a German-born writer could to assimilation into English culture, but even that apparent closeness can be misleading. He may have spent most of his adult life in Essex, but his themes remained profoundly German to the end.

W. G. Sebald

Winfried Georg Sebald
(1944-2001)

Poetry:


1. After Nature. 1988. Trans. Michael Hamburger. 2002. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
2. For Years Now. Images by Tess Jaray. London: Short Books, 2001.
3. [with Jan Peter Tripp] Unrecounted: 33 Texts and 33 Etchings. 2003. Trans. Michael Hamburger. Hamish Hamilton. London: Penguin, 2004.
4. Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001. 2008. Trans. Iain Galbraith. Hamish Hamilton. London: Penguin, 2011.

Prose:


5. Vertigo. 1990. Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Harvill Press, 1999.
6. The Emigrants. 1992. Trans. Michael Hulse. 1996. London: Vintage, 2002.
7. The Rings of Saturn. 1995. Trans. Michael Hulse. 1998. London: Vintage, 2002.
8. A Place in the Country: On Gottfried Keller, Johann Peter Hebel, Robert Walser and Others. 1998. Trans. Jo Catling. 2013. London: Penguin, 2014.
9. On the Natural History of Destruction: With Essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Améry and Peter Weiss. 1999. Trans. Anthea Bell. 2003. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004.
10. Austerlitz. 2001. Trans. Anthea Bell. 2001. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002.
11. Campo Santo. Ed. Sven Meyer. 2003. Trans. Anthea Bell. 2005. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006.

W. G. Sebald: A Place in the Country (2013)


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So there you go. That's my roll call of volumes. I suppose that it'll do no harm to reveal that I also bought another book - with my own money - while I was in the shop. I hope it shows no disrespect to my colleagues to admit that alongside all these impressive-sounding 'show books', I also picked up a copy of the latest Neil Gaiman collection.

Strangely enough, that seems to be the one I find myself reaching for most often in the long summer afternoons:

The Neil Gaiman Reader (2020)

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The Magician: Thomas Mann or Colm Tóibín?

Thomas Mann (1946)

I've spent a good deal of time these summer holidays rereading books by Thomas Mann. When I wasn't reading him, I was writing blogposts about him: on this site as well as my bibliography one. And when I wasn't reading or writing about him, I was ordering new items to fill (mostly imaginary) gaps in my Mann collection. I may have gone a bit over the top in that respect, in fact.

Even so, it came as a surprise when I saw how many of the people I mentioned him to already seemed to have a pretty comprehensive knowledge of the life and times of Thomas Mann. I hadn't realised his work was so much in the mainstream. Until the penny dropped. Their knowledge was not so much knowledge gleaned from reading Mann, as a reflection of the vogue of Colm Tóibín's recent biographical novel The Magician.

Colm Tóibín: The Magician (2021)

So what's wrong with that, you ask? Why, nothing at all. There's no reason why people shouldn't use biographies and even biographical novels to pick up information about authors they've never actually read. I've done it myself, and feel no compunction in admitting the fact.

It isn't quite the same as actually reading your way through Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain, mind you, but then who ever claimed it was? I guess any disquiet I feel over this - which I freely admit may be partially motivated by pique: there I was thinking I was something special because I'd ploughed through all these immense novels by some obscure old German, only to find that all his secrets were freely on sale in a far more convenient and readable form - is really based on a couple of other issues.

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Murdo Macleod: Colm Tóibín (2018)

My first concern can be outlined more or less as follows. The Magician is certainly a very readable novel, but is it a good novel? There seems to be a kind of concensus among those who haven't actually read Mann that it is a pretty good novel - even such terms as 'masterpiece' have been bandied about (with a subtle implication that Mann is rather lucky that one so gifted should take him up at this late date in time).

I, too, think it a good novel: or at any rate a very entertaining one, which is perhaps not quite the same thing. But then I'm rather a fan of bio-fiction. In my teens I greatly enjoyed reading fat tomes by the likes of Irving Stone which gave overviews of the lives of worthies like Vincent Van Gogh (Lust for Life) or Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy) long before I'd seen the fine films based on these books.

I've provided a list of Irving Stone's books at the bottom of this post for anyone who'd like to follow up on his work. His later books on the likes of Darwin and Freud were perhaps less successful than the earlier ones, but there's no harm in such works (I think), especially given the lack of pretentiousness which surrounds them.

That isn't quite the tone people take when they talk of Colm Tóibín. After all, he's only written two such novels so far - about, respectively, Mann and Henry James - but he does appear to have won quite a reputation as a serious modern author with his (many) other novels.

Colm Tóibín: The Master (2004)

The Henry James novel, which I've also read, is interesting. Tóibín makes a concerted attempt to inhabit the style as well as the consciousness of James during one of the great crises of his life, the failure of his dramatic ambitions in the 1890s. It's a far more focussed, and perhaps more ambitious attempt to become the Master, than is his Mann.

John Singer Sargent: Henry James (1913)

On the other hand, the Mann book covers a whole half-century of his life and contacts in a series of neatly staged scenes, with an overarching theme. Such a task cannot have been easy. It might, in fact, have been easier to repeat his earlier success by doing a study of some particular aspect of his life in a prose-style pastiched from Death in Venice.

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Luchino Visconti, dir.: Death in Venice (1971)

Which brings me to my second point. No-one's ever really been in any serious doubt about the homoerotic inclinations of either Henry James or Thomas Mann. True, the former may well never had had sex at all in the conventional sense. He certainly formed no longterm relationships, and kept his private life a well-guarded secret.

Mann, by contrast, was a married man, with a complex and turbulent family life, and a crowd of children and siblings who all seem to have been in varying states of rebellion at various times. But no reader of his work can fail to notice his obsession with male beauty and passionate same-sex friendships. Even if you didn't, critics and biographers have pointed it out ad nauseam. But did he ever actually have sex with a man? No-one knows. There are reasons to doubt it.

Tóibín's Mann certainly does. He's a good deal gayer than any previous version of Mann - which is, again, Tóibín's prerogative. Nor does this decision exactly come as a surprise, given the tenor of his other work. His James, too, is far gayer than (say) Leon Edel's.

Leon Edel: Life of Henry James (5 vols: 1953-72)

All that is certainly well within the bounds of fair comment. But Tóibín's Mann is also far more of a domestic tyrant and family autocrat than seems to come through in his surviving letters and diary - not to mention a bit of a sneak when it comes to hiding his rather hole-in-corner affairs.

Elizabeth Bishop

There's a very apposite letter by Thomas Hardy once applied by the poet Elizabeth Bishop to a not dissimilar case:

Here is a quotation from dear little Hardy which I copied out years ago ... It's from a letter written in 1911, referring to "an abuse which was said to have occurred - that of publishing details of a lately deceased man's life under the guise of a novel, with assurances of truth scattered in the newspapers." ...

"What should certainly be protested against, in cases where there is no authorisation, is the mixing of fact and fiction in unknown proportions. Infinite mischief would lie in that. If any statements in the dress of fiction are covertly hinted to be fact, all must be fact, and nothing else but fact, for obvious reasons. The power of getting lies believed about people through that channel after they are dead, by stirring in a few truths, is a horror to contemplate."

Which I guess is my point. 'If any statements in the dress of fiction are covertly hinted to be fact, all must be fact, and nothing else but fact, for obvious reasons.' In other words, interesting though many of Tóibín's conjectures about Mann certainly are, it's hard to know how to take them, exactly, without any real sense of the evidence they're based on.

Of course this could be used as a way of dismissing biographical novels in general as a viable literary form, but I'm not sure that it's necessary to go quite so far as that. Tóibín's novel strikes me - from my own knowledge of Mann's writing and from reading at least some of the other biographies - as unreasonably critical of his subject's bona fides in matters of the heart. He leaves Mann's rather more patchy political record largely to one side.

Thomas Mann: The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus (1962)

But all this leaves me dying to know where Tóibín got his information from. Out of his own head? Or are there substantive archives of material which give a sound basis for at least some of these suppositions? I don't suppose we'll ever know, unless he decides to give us a 'writing-of' book along the lines of Mann's own Story of a Novel, about the composition of Doctor Faustus; or David Lodge's The Year of Henry James, which gives an account both of his own James bio-novel Author, Author, but also of the various others - including Tóibín's - which appeared in that same year, 2004.

David Lodge: The Year of Henry James (2006)

•

Alex Ross (2010)

That's about as far as I'd got when I chanced upon a recent New Yorker article called "Thomas Mann’s Brush with Darkness" by their learned Germanophile music critic, Alex Ross. This was the first passage that caught my eye:

Because I have been almost unhealthily obsessed with Mann’s writing since the age of eighteen, I may be ill-equipped to win over skeptics, but I know why I return to it year after year. Mann is, first, a supremely gifted storyteller, adept at the slow windup and the rapid turn of the screw. He is a solemn trickster who is never altogether earnest about anything, especially his own grand Goethean persona. At the heart of his labyrinth are scenes of emotional chaos, episodes of philosophical delirium, intimations of inhuman coldness. His politics traverse the twentieth-century spectrum, ricochetting from right to left. His sexuality is an exhibitionistic enigma. In life and work alike, his contradictions are pressed together like layers in metamorphic rock.

Yep. What he said. I know what he means when he refers to his Mannophilia as an 'unhealthy obsession.' As a fellow-obsessive, I also understand the reservations he mentions below on the actual need for Tóibín’s project:

At first glance, Tóibín’s undertaking seems superfluous, since there are already a number of great novels about Thomas Mann, and they have the advantage of being by Thomas Mann. Few writers of fiction have so relentlessly incorporated their own experiences into their work. Hanno Buddenbrook, the proud, hurt boy who improvises Wagnerian fantasies on the piano; Tonio Kröger, the proud, hurt young writer who sacrifices his life for his art; Prince Klaus Heinrich, the hero of Royal Highness, who rigidly performs his duties; Gustav von Aschenbach, the hidebound literary celebrity who loses his mind to a boy on a Venice beach; Mut-em-enet, Potiphar’s wife, who falls desperately in love with the handsome Israelite Joseph; the confidence man Felix Krull, who fools people into thinking he is more impressive than he is; the Faustian composer Adrian Leverkühn, who is compared to “an abyss into which the feelings others expressed for him vanished soundlessly without a trace” — all are avatars of the author, sometimes channelling his letters and diaries.

He, too, feels some misgivings about the clash between Tóibín's imaginings and the existing documents:

Tóibín doesn’t adhere exclusively to the biographical record, and his most decisive intervention comes in the realm of sex. In all likelihood, Mann never engaged in anything resembling what contemporary sensibilities would classify as gay sex. His diaries are reliable in factual matters and do not shy away from embarrassing details; we hear about erections, masturbation, nocturnal emissions. But he clearly has trouble even picturing male-on-male action, let alone participating in it. When, in 1950, he reads Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar, he asks himself, “How can one sleep with gentlemen?” The Mann of The Magician, by contrast, is allowed to have several same-sex encounters, though the details remain vague.

In the end, much though he relishes certain passages and aperçus in Tóibín's novel:

The Magician, deft and diligent as it is, ultimately diminishes the imperial strangeness of Mann’s nature. He comes across as a familiar, somewhat pitiable creature — a closeted man who occasionally gives in to his desires. The real Mann never gave in to his desires, but he also never really hid them. Gay themes surfaced in his writing almost from the start, and he made clear that his stories were autobiographical. When, in 1931, he received a newspaper questionnaire asking about his “first love,” he replied, in essence, “Read ‘Tonio Kröger.’ ” Likewise, of Death in Venice he wrote, “Nothing is invented.” Gay men saw the author as one of their own ...

Perhaps the real problem with The Magician, then, is that its author is not content to write a solid, unexciting Mann-and-water bio-novel in the Irving Stone mode, but isn't ready, either, to engage fully with the 'element of charlatanism' (Alex Ross's phrase) inherent in Mann's magpie methodology.

As a result, The Magician ends up falling between two stools. It provides a fascinating (though selective) reading of Thomas Mann's life, but not really of his art. Tóibín's muse seems more comfortable with the stylistic conventions of Henry James's day than with the oncoming juggernaut of twentieth-century Modernism. Mann's basic techniques of irony and sampling were foundational for post-modern writers such as Nabokov or Pynchon. Mann, after all, 'had always been haunted by the sense of being an empty shell, a wooden soldier.'

All along, the dubiousness of genius had been one of his chief motifs. In “The Brother,” his essay on Hitler, he wrote that greatness was an aesthetic rather than an ethical phenomenon, meaning that Nazi exploitation of Goethe and Beethoven was less a betrayal of German artist-worship than a grotesque extension of it. The Magician’s finest trick was to dismantle the pretensions of genius while preserving his own lofty stature. The feat could be accomplished only once, and it happens definitively in Doctor Faustus, when Leverkühn’s explication of his valedictory cantata spirals into madness. An immaculately turned-out personification of bourgeois culture stages its destruction.

So am I saying that you shouldn't read The Magician? Not at all. Tóibín is not alone nowadays in his return to the solider conventions of the realist novel. What I would advise, though, is tempering your reading of Tóibín with some study of Thomas Mann's own fiction: even just a few short stories if you don't have the patience for one of the novels. "Disorder and Early Sorrow" or "Mario and the Magician" will quickly convince you, if you needed the reminder, that we're not dealing here with an empty windbag but with a far subtler talent, a writer on a level with Chekhov or Joyce.

Thomas Mann: Mario and the Magician and Other Stories (1975)

•


Getty Images / Hulton Archive: Irving Stone

Irving Tennenbaum ['Irving Stone']
(1903-1989)

Fiction:


1. Lust for Life: A Novel of Vincent Van Gogh. 1935. London: John Lane / The Bodley Head, 1940.
2. Sailor on Horseback. [Jack London] (1938)
3. Immortal Wife. [Jessie Benton Frémont] (1944)
4. Adversary in the House. [Eugene V. Debs and his wife Kate] (1947)
5. The Passionate Journey. [American artist John Noble] (1949)
6. The President's Lady. [Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson Jackson] (1951)
7. Love is Eternal. [Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd] (1954)
8. The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo. 1961. Fontana Books. London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1965.
9. Those Who Love. [John Adams and Abigail Adams] (1965)
10. The Passions of the Mind. [Sigmund Freud] (1971)
11. The Greek Treasure. [Heinrich Schliemann] (1975)
12. The Origin. [Charles Darwin] (1980)
13. Depths of Glory. [Camille Pissarro] (1985)

Non-fiction:


14. Clarence Darrow for the Defence. 1941. London: The Bodley Head, 1949.
15. They Also Ran. [Failed Presidential Candidates] (1943 / 1966)
16. Earl Warren (1948)
17. Men to Match My Mountains: The Monumental Saga of the Winning of America's Far West (1956)

Edited:


18. [with Jean Stone]. Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh. 1937. London: Cassell, 1973.
19. [with Jean Stone]. I, Michelangelo, Sculptor: An Autobiography through Letters. Trans. Charles Speroni. 1963. Fontana Books. London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1965.

Carol Reed, dir.: The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

The World of Charles Dickens

The World of Charles Dickens
[photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd (2022)]

For Christmas 2021, Bronwyn gave me a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle called The World of Charles Dickens. It took us almost a week to complete it. Above you can see me putting in the very last piece. Below is an earlier stage of the process.

Opening stages

Mind you, I did have help. Zero was always ready to oblige with advice, and the fact that Bronwyn is holding the camera doesn't mean that she didn't do more than her fair share of wrestling with this fiendish conundrum, either.

Jack & Zero

It was a bit of a relief to get it done, to tell you the truth. I'd forgotten just how tricky it could be to complete a large jigsaw of this kind. My mother used to bring them home for us when we were kids. She volunteered in the local opportunity shop, and it went against her conscience to sell any donated goods which hadn't been thoroughly checked in advance. They almost invariably had a piece or two missing, which has left me with an abiding syndrome about the final stages of assembly.

The field of battle

This particular puzzle - fresh out of the box - did prove to be complete. That hadn't stopped me from anticipating the worst. Bronwyn is of a sunnier disposition, fortunately.

Barry Falls: The World of Charles Dickens. Ed. John Mullan (2021)

A great many of the characters included in the design were obvious enough: Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller (The Pickwick Papers); Lizzie Hexham rowing her father down the Thames (Our Mutual Friend); the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future (A Christmas Carol); Jo the crossing-sweeper being accosted by Lady Dedlock (Bleak House) ...

The World of Charles Dickens

A great many of the others I'd never have guessed, though. I did spot the rowboat with Pip, Herbert Pocket, and Magwitch the convict from Great Expectations, but Estella and Miss Havisham were less clear to me. A great many of the 70-odd characters included just looked like typical Victorians in breeches and bonnets. But an immense amount of ingenuity had been spent on the layout and colouring of the picture - so many windows and roofs to identify! Not to mention fields, bushes and lawns ... In fact, if it hadn't been for the Thames running through it, the puzzle might well have proved insuperable.

•

The Oxford Illustrated Dickens (21 volumes: 1987)

It did get me thinking about Dickens in general. In an earlier post about my Grandmother and her book collection, I mentioned the 22-volume set of his works which she and my grandfather painstakingly saved up for in the 1930s, and which has eventually made its circuitous way to my own bookshelves.

I can't claim to have read all of it. I have read his fourteen full-length novels (as well as the unfinished Edwin Drood), and - at one time or another - most of the other miscellaneous fiction he published. But some of the compilations of journalism and other occasional pieces (Sketches by Boz, Reprinted Pieces, and The Uncommercial Traveller, for instance) have hitherto evaded my quest for completeness.

Which is one reason I decided that a good project for Summer might be to remedy that. I recently read a New Yorker article on just such an attempt, by a writer called Brad Leithauser. I'd note, though, that he wrote it while he was "nearly finished [my emphasis]; only The Old Curiosity Shop and The Mystery of Edwin Drood remain."

Given that this admission shows that he hadn't been reading chronologically - which is, in my opinion, the only way of gleaning much profit from a trawl through an author's collected works - and given his almost exclusive focus on David Copperfield at the expense of Dicken's obscurer fiction, I must confess to a certain scepticism about the thoroughness of Leithauser's coverage - not to mention his conclusion that "my favorite Dickens is mostly the world’s favorite Dickens."

His choice of three books - respectively, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and the above-mentioned David Copperfield - as "all but flawless in their chosen genres" is, I suppose, fair enough. But is it just a perverse taste for the recondite which makes me find that a little disappointing? What of the baroque splendours of Our Mutual Friend? What of the exuberant frenzies of Nicholas Nickleby or Pickwick? What of such proto-M. R. James-like, pared-back ghost stories as "The Signalman" or "The Trial for Murder"?

Dickens's work as a whole seems to constitute - for me at least - a curious combination of social realism and gothic extremity. His actual political opinions had a reactionary tinge which make them less than palatable today - but his emotional engagement with the realities of poverty and want are still powerful and moving even at this distance in time.

He was horrible to his wife, duplicitous about his mistress, dictatorial to his children, and intensely demanding of his friends. He was simultaneously tirelessly productive, endlessly energetic, and immensely self-destructive. It's not so much surprising that he burned out at the early age of 58 as that he was able to last that long in the first place!

One of the few good reasons I've ever heard for wanting there to be a next world, though, is the opportunity to read the conclusion to the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I presume that he will have cranked around to completing by now.

•

Michael Slater: Charles Dickens (2007)

There are many biographies. At times it can seem as if the majority even of bookish people are far less keen on reading him than reading about him. The original Victorian biography by John Forster is still an essential source, and I must confess, too, to a soft spot for Edgar Johnson's exhaustive two-volume account of 1952.

I'm not myself a great admirer of Peter Ackroyd's strange biography-with-fictional-interludes, though it certainly has its moments. A far more significant contribution to scholarship came from Claire Tomalin's The Invisible Woman: a biography of Dickens's mistress Nelly Ternan, which appeared in the same year, 1990.

Claire Tomalin: Charles Dickens: A Life (2011)

She's followed this up since with a full-dress biography of Dickens, perhaps meant as a riposte to Michael Slater's, also pictured above. Slater is, after all, a bit of a Ternan-sceptic, witness his book The Great Charles Dickens Scandal (2012), which takes issue with many of Tomalin's points.

In any case, whatever your views on this or other contentious points, you won't find too much difficulty in finding material to your taste in the vast untidy field of Dickens scholarship. Even the famously critical F. R. Leavis finally decided to admit him to the fold of the 'great tradition' in English fiction.

•

Andrew Davies, writ.: Bleak House (2005)

There was a bit of mini Dickens revival in 2005, with Andrew Davies' magisterial TV adaptation of Bleak House. This was a far less mannered and parodic take on the dramatic intensity of Dickens' later novels than had hitherto been seen on British TV.

Andrew Davies, writ.: Little Dorrit (2008)

Davies followed it up with an equally brilliant and star-studded adaptation of Little Dorrit a couple of years later, with a breathtaking performance in the title role by a young Claire Foy. This also had the not unfortunate by-product of supplanting Christine Edzard's ambitious but not entirely successful double-film version of 1987.

Christine Edzard, dir. & writ.: Little Dorrit (1987)

At the time this seemed like the best one could expect when it came to putting one of Dickens' most complex novels on screen. Davies seemingly effortlessly surpassed it, though there were certainly some memorable moments in the earlier version.

I've provided a list, below, of the Dickens films and TV serials I happen to have to hand on DVD. I guess, for me, the highpoints would have to be David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). I also enjoyed the Dirk Bogarde version of A Tale of Two Cities (1958), though, as well as some of the classic BBC adaptations of such novels as The Pickwick Papers (1985), Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and Our Mutual Friend (1998).

Marc Miller & Wolf Mankowitz, writ.: Dickens of London (1976-77)

Another TV show which had a huge influence on me in my teens was the 13-part Dickens of London. Roy Dotrice made a valiant effort to play both the young and older Dickens, but the sheer ambition of the attempt still seems astonishing now. I was very glad to have the chance to see it again. The episode where Dickens meets Edgar Allan Poe, and reenacts with him a strange version of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", made a great impression on me at the time.

•

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens ['Boz']
(1812-1870)

Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit (1857)


Collected Editions:


1. The Works of Charles Dickens. 22 vols. Dunedin & Wellington: A. H. Reed, 1931:
   1. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People (1836-39)
   2. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37)
   3. Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy’s Progress (1837-39)
   4. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
   5. The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
   6. Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ‘80 (1841)
   7. American Notes & Pictures from Italy (1842 & 1846)
   8. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44)
   9. Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol / The Chimes / The Cricket on the Hearth / The Battle of Life / The Haunted Man (1843, 1844, 1845, 1846 & 1848)
   10. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey & Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation (1848)
   11. The Personal History of David Copperfield (1850)
   12. A Child’s History of England (1851-53)
   13. Bleak House (1853)
   14. Hard Times / Hunted Down / Holiday Romance / George Silverman's Explanation (1854 & 1867)
   15. Little Dorrit (1857)
   16. Reprinted Pieces: Also The Lamplighter; To Be Read at Dusk; Sunday Under Three Heads (1858)
   17. A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
   18. Great Expectations (1860-61)
   19. The Uncommercial Traveller (1860-69)
   20. Our Mutual Friend (1864-65)
   21. The Mystery of Edwin Drood & Master Humphrey’s Clock (1870 & 1840)
   22. Christmas Stories: From “Household Words” and “All The Year Round” (1874)

Charles Dickens: The 'Daily News' Memorial Edition (1900-1910)



2. The 'Daily News' Memorial Edition. 19 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, Ld, n.d. [c.1900-1910]:
   1. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People. Illustrated by George Cruickshank (1836-39)
   2. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Phiz et al (1836-37)
   3. [Oliver Twist / A Tale of Two Cities (1837-39 & 1859)]
   4. [The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839)]
   5. [The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)]
   6. Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ‘80. Illustrated (1841)
   7. American Notes / Pictures from Italy / A Child’s History of England (1842, 1846 & 1851-53)
   8. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated (1843-44)
   9. Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol / The Chimes / The Cricket on the Hearth / The Battle of Life / The Haunted Man & Hard Times. Illustrated (1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1848 & 1853)
   10. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey & Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated (1848)
   11. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Illustrated (1850)
   12. [Bleak House (1853)]
   13. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Phiz (1857)
   14. [Great Expectations / The Uncommercial Traveller (1860-61, 1860-69)]
   15. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone (1864-65)
   16. The Mystery of Edwin Drood & Reprinted Pieces. Illustrated (1870 & 1858 40)
   17. Christmas Stories: From “Household Words” and “All The Year Round” & Other Stories: Master Humphrey’s Clock / Hunted Down / Holiday Romance / George Silverman's Explanation. Illustrated (1874, 1840, 1867)
   18. [The Dickens Dictionary, by Gilbert A. Pierce & William A. Wheeler (1880)]
   19. [Life of Charles Dickens, by John Forster (1872-74)]

The Annotated Dickens (2 vols, 1986)



3. Dickens, Charles. The Annotated Dickens. Ed. Edward Giuliano & Philip Collins. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.
   1. The Pickwick Papers (1836-37); Oliver Twist (1837-39); A Christmas Carol (1843); Hard Times (1854)
   2. David Copperfield (1849-50); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great Expectations (1860-61)



Charles Dickens: Penguin Classics


Novels:


4. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1836-37. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Penguin English Library. 1972. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
5. Oliver Twist. 1837-39. Ed. Peter Fairclough. Introduction by Angus Wilson. Penguin English Library. 1966. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
   • Oliver Twist. 1837-39. Ed. Kathleen Tillotson. 1966. The Clarendon Dickens. Ed. John Butt & Kathleen Tillotson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
6. Nicholas Nickleby. 1839. Ed. Michael Slater. Penguin English Library. 1978. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
7. The Old Curiosity Shop. 1841. Ed. Angus Easson. Introduction by Malcolm Andrews. Penguin English Library. 1972. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
8. Barnaby Rudge. 1841. Ed. Gordon Spence. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
9. Martin Chuzzlewit. 1843-44. Ed. P. N. Furbank. Penguin English Library. 1968. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
10. Dombey and Son. 1848. Ed. Peter Fairclough. Introduction by Raymond Williams. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
11. The Personal History of David Copperfield. 1850. Ed. Trevor Blount. Penguin Classics. 1966. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
12. Bleak House. 1853. Ed. Norman Page. Introduction by J. Hillis Miller. Penguin English Library. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
13. Hard Times for These Times. 1854. Ed. David Craig. Penguin Classics. 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
14. Little Dorrit. 1857. Ed. John Holloway. Penguin Classics. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
15. A Tale of Two Cities. 1859. Ed. George Woodcock. Penguin English Library. 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
16. Great Expectations. 1861. Ed. Angus Calder. Penguin English Library. 1965. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
    • Great Expectations. 1860-61. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. The Works of Charles Dickens, National Edition, Volume XXIX. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1907.
17. Our Mutual Friend. 1864-65. Ed. Stephen Gill. Penguin English Library. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
18. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. 1870. Ed. Arthur J. Cox. Introduction by Angus Wilson. Penguin English Library. 1974. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.



Charles Dickens: Selected Short Fiction (1976)


Shorter fiction:


19. The Christmas Books. Vol. 1: A Christmas Carol / The Chimes. 1843 & 1844. Ed. Michael Slater. Penguin English Library. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
20. The Christmas Books. Vol. 2: The Cricket on the Hearth / The Battle of Life / The Haunted Man. 1845, 1846 & 1848. Ed. Michael Slater. Penguin Classics. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
21. The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose. 1843. Ed. Michael Patrick Hearn. Illustrations by John Leech. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2004.
22. [with Wilkie Collins] The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 1856. Illustrated by John Dugan. Venture Library. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1961.
23. Selected Short Fiction. Ed. Deborah A. Thomas. Penguin English Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
24. Readings from Dickens. Ed. Emlyn Williams. London: The Folio Society, 1953.
25. Sikes and Nancy and Other Public Readings. Ed. Philip Collins. 1975. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.



Charles Dickens: Selected Journalism: 1850-1870 (1997)


Non-fiction:


26. Sketches by Boz. 1839. Ed. Dennis Walder. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
27. American Notes. 1842. Ed. Patricia Ingham. 2000. Rev. ed. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004.
28. Pictures from Italy. 1846. Ed. Kate Flint. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998.
29. The Life of Our Lord: Written Expressly for His Children by Charles Dicken. 1849. Foreword by Lady Dickens. 1934. London: Associated Newspapers Ltd., 1934.
30. Miscellaneous Papers. 1912. The Works of Charles Dickens: Complete Works. Centennial Edition. 2 vols. Geneva: Heron Books, 1970.
31. Selected Journalism 1850-1870. Ed. David Pascoe. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997.
32. My Early Times. Ed. Peter Rowland. London: The Folio Society, 1988.
33. The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism. Ed. Michael Slater. 4 vols. London: J. M. Dent, 1994-2000.
    1. Dickens’ Journalism: Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers, 1833-39. Illustrations by George Cruikshank et al. 1994. Phoenix Giants. London: The Orion Publishing Group, 1996.
    2. Dickens’ Journalism: ‘The Amusements of the People’ and Other Papers: Reports, Essays and Reviews, 1834-51. 1996. London: J. M. Dent, 1997.
    3. Dickens’ Journalism: ‘Gone Astray’ and Other Papers from Household Words, 1851-59. The Orion Publishing Group Ltd. London: J. M. Dent, 1999.
    4. [with John Drew] Dickens’ Journalism: The Uncommercial Traveller and Other Papers, 1859-1870. The Orion Publishing Group Ltd. London: J. M. Dent, 2000.



Charles Dickens: The Plays and Poems (2 vols, 1882)


Poetry & Drama:


34. Dickens, Charles. Complete Plays and Selected Poems. 1970. London: Vision Press Ltd., 1974.



Andrew McConnell Stott: The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi (2009)


Edited:


35. Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. 1838. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: George Routledge and Sons, n.d. [c.1879].
36. Stott, Andrew McConnell. The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi. 2009. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 2010.



The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens (12 vols, 1965-2002)


Letters:


37. The Letters: 1833-1870. Ed. His Sister-in-Law & His Eldest Daughter. 1893. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1903.
38. The Letters of Charles Dickens: 1820-1839. Ed. Madeline House & Graham Storey. The Pilgrim Edition. Vol. 1 of 12. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965.



David Lean, dir.: Great Expectations (1946)


Dramatisations:


39. The Charles Dickens Collection (2012). 3-DVD set:
    1. Great Expectations, dir. David Lean, writ. David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame & Kay Walsh – with John Mills, Bernard Miles, Finlay Currie, Jean Simmons, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson – (UK, 1946)
    2. Oliver Twist, dir. David Lean, writ. David Lean & Stanley Haynes – with Kay Walsh, John Howard Davies, Alec Guinness – (UK, 1948)
    3. A Tale of Two Cities, dir. Ralph Thomas, writ. T. E. B. Clarke – with Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin – (UK, 1958)
40. Dickens of London: 13-part miniseries, created by Wolf Mankowitz & Marc Miller – with Roy Dotrice, Simon Bell, Gene Foad, Lois Baxter, Christine McKenna – (UK, 1976). 4-DVD set.
41. The Charles Dickens Collection: 8 Classic BBC Adaptations. 12-DVD set:
    1. The Pickwick Papers – with Nigel Stock, Clive Swift, Patrick Malahide – (UK, 1985)
    2. Oliver Twist – with Lysette Antony, Ben Rodska, Miriam Margolyes, Eric Porter, Michael Attwell – (UK, 1985)
    3. A Christmas Carol – with Michael Hordern, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Lee – (UK, 1977)
    4. Martin Chuzzlewit – with Paul Scofield, John Mills, Tom Wilkinson, Pete Postlethwaite, Julia Sawlaha, Maggie Steed – (UK, 1994)
    5. David Copperfield – with Daniel Radcliffe, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Cherie Lunghi, Ian McKellan, Ciaran McMenamin – (UK, 1999)
    6. A Tale of Two Cities – with Paul Shelley, Nigel Stock, Sally Osborne – (UK, 1980)
    7. Great Expectations – with Ioan Gruffudd, Charlotte Rampling, Bernard Hill – (UK, 1999)
    8. Our Mutual Friend – with Paul McGann, Keeley Hawes, Anna Friel, Peter Vaughan, Timothy Spall – (UK, 1998)
42. Charles Dickens: 200th Anniversary Collection (2012). 9-DVD set:
    1. Bleak House, dir. Justin Chadwick & Susanna White, writ. Andrew Davies – with Denis Lawson, Anna Maxwell Martin, Patrick Kennedy, Carey Mulligan, Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Alun Armstrong, Timothy West, Burn Gorman, Harry Eden – (UK, 2005)
    2. Oliver Twist, dir. Coky Giedroyc, writ. Sarah Phelps – with William Miller, Adam Arnold, Tom Hardy, Timothy Spall, Julian Rhind Tutt – (UK, 2007)
    3. Little Dorrit, dir. Adam Smith, Dearbhla Walsh, & Diarmuid Lawrence, writ. Andrew Davies – with Claire Foy, Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Courtenay, Judy Parfitt – (UK, 2008)
    4. Great Expectations, dir. Brian Kirk, writ. Sarah Phelps – with Ray Winstone, Gillian Anderson, Douglas Booth, Vanessa Kirby, David Suchet – (UK, 2011)
43. The Man Who Invented Christmas, dir. Bharat Nalluri, writ. Susan Coyne (based on the book by Les Standiford) – with Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce – (Ireland / Canada, 2017).



Edgar Johnson: Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (2 vols, 1952)


Secondary:


44. Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision. London: Headline Book Publishing PLC., 1987.
45. Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd., 1990.
46. Butt, John, & Kathleen Tillotson. Dickens at Work. 1957. London & New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1982.
47. Chesterton, G. K. Charles Dickens. 1906. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1919.
48. Chesterton, G. K. Criticisms and Appreciations of Charles Dickens’ Works. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1911.
49. Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. With Thirty-Two Illustrations. 1872-74. London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, n.d.
50. Hardwick, Michael & Mollie. The Charles Dickens Encyclopedia. 1973. An Omega Book. London: Futura Publications Limited, 1976.
51. Hibbert, Christopher. The Making of Charles Dickens. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
52. House, Humphry. The Dickens World. 1941. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege / Oxford University Press, 1950.
53. Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens. His Tragedy and Triumph. 2 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1952.
54. Pope-Hennessy, Una. Charles Dickens: 1812-1870. 1945. London: The Reprint Society, 1947.
55. Slater, Michael. Dickens and Women. 1983. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1986.
56. Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens. 2009. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2011.
57. Slater, Michael. The Great Charles Dickens Scandal. 2012. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014.
58. Tillotson, Kathleen. 'Dombey and Son.' In Novels of the Eighteen-Forties. 1954. Oxford Paperbacks. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
59. Tomalin, Claire. The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. 1990. London: Penguin, 1991.
60. Tomalin, Claire. Charles Dickens: A Life. 2011. London: Penguin, 2012.
61. Wilson, Angus. The World of Charles Dickens. 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.



Angus Wilson: The World of Charles Dickens (1970)

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The World of Charles Dickens
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (2022)]