Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalinis an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 June 1933
coming dickens forward joined nor party political power rightly saw writer
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction.
dickens sons
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
deny dickens fascinated record relation though
I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did.
bad behaviour dickens faithfully love man present shock trying
When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming.
christmas dickens emerged
Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.
dickens felt hated spoke worked
As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.
dickens great multiple
After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.
life
I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
badly behaved economic hope life position power
I've behaved badly in my life. I hope I haven't behaved as badly as Dickens! In a way, if you're a woman, you're not in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
achieved childhood children country house men might older rather regret romantic saw six spent suppose vision
Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.
far films invent lives nature novels plots subjects whereas
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
evidence signs
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.
book despised english medieval saved
I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends.