Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, the editor of several editions of Dickens's works, sets out to tell of "the invention of the novelist," as the subtitle of Becoming Dickens claims. Rather than a biography of Dickens's life, then, this is a biography of his identity--an account of how he invented and reinvented himself throughout his life, transforming a childhood of poverty and hardship into a job as a clerk, into a successful career as a journalist and, slowly, becoming a novelist.
This transformation is one at which Dickens himself marvelled, and one of the greatest features of Douglas-Fairhurst's biography is his analysis of Dickens's own feelings about his career path, discerned from a careful examination of his works. By placing Dickens within the context of his own cast of characters and further establishing that context within the history and culture of the Victorian era, Douglas-Fairhurst has succeeded in defining the personality behind the stories so many of us know and love.
The concept of knowing an author, rather than just knowing his history or his works, is one that any bookworm is sure to enjoy, and readers of Dickens will appreciate his works more by understanding how they came to be. Ultimately, Becoming Dickens is a thorough, intriguing glimpse into the growth of both a person and an author, and one not to be missed by any lover of literature. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm