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The Turning Point
- Author
- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
- Narrator
- Philip Stevens
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 2 September 2021
- Run Time
- 11 hours 44 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
A major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life and times
*BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF BECOMING DICKENS AND THE STORY OF ALICE*
The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.
The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the greatest literary personalities ever to have lived.
'It is hard to imagine a better book on Dickens' NEW STATESMAN
'A startling and exciting writer' A. S. BYATT, SPECTATOR
© Robert Douglas-Fairhurst 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Critics Review
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This tremendous book dazzles and delights... it's full of discoveries. A glorious book; revealing and unravelling Charles Dickens before our very eyes, melding his life and his work, using scholarship, wit and passion - a triumph.
Miriam Margolyes
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This immersive biography, by the author of the Costa-shortlisted The Story of Alice, had me hooked... published in a sumptuous package, with illustrations throughout.
The Bookseller, Editor's Choice
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Clever and witty, packed with fiercely academic research and erudite analysis, but written in featherlight, elegant prose.
Natalie Haynes
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The Turning Point...builds incrementally towards Bleak House...[and] makes for a very satisfying finale... Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has taken pains of his own and this wonderfully entertaining book is the result.
Observer
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Douglas-Fairhurst is a shrewd, amusing and original guide... [he] gives you fascinating facts... [and] a brisk and brilliant analysis of Bleak House.
The Times
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[The Turning Point] is beautifully written and packed with wonders and insight and I shall definitely be rereading it before the year is out. Moreover, by the author's holding the magnifying glass aloft and allowing the sun to focus on one spot, 1851, the leaf catches flame.
Oldie
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[The Turning Point] hums with the intellectual life of the day.
Saga Magazine
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Taking his cue from that novel [Bleak House], Douglas-Fairhurst uses a fascinating range of interconnected sources, side-plots and telling details to dramatise the complex social and imaginative web out of which it came...He gives us history not as grand narrative or teleology but as total immersion and multiplicity. As such, Douglas-Fairhurst invites us to feel what it felt like to be Dickens in 1851.
Financial Times
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A fascinating biography that ultimately brings fresh insight to the life of Charles Dickens and his work as a novelist.
Spectator
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Sparklingly informative
Guardian
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
- Narrator
- Philip Stevens
- Duration
- 11 hours 44 minutes
- Release Date
- 2 September 2021
- ISBN
- 9781529193404
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Biography: writers, European history, Literature: history and criticism
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin. A major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life and times*BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF BECOMING DICKENS AND THE STORY OF ALICE*The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the greatest literary personalities ever to have lived.'It is hard to imagine a better book on Dickens' NEW STATESMAN'A startling and exciting writer' A. S. BYATT, SPECTATOR© Robert Douglas-Fairhurst 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
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