The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens

Simon Callow Glorious. This is a book for which readers have been waiting for a very long time. It takes you directly, in Dickens's own words, and with incomparable vividness, into his extraordinary life and mind. The notes and editorial matter deftly paint in the background to provide a detailed and constantly astonishing portrait of one of the most interesting men who ever lived.

Times Literary Supplement Among the dozens of Dickens publications connected with the bicentenary of the author's birth ... it is hard to imagine one more necessary than this

Sunday Times glorious letters reflecting every facet of Dickens's life; should not be missed

The Sunday Times This is Dickens by Dickens. Whatever comes out in this bicentenary year, do not miss it.

New Statesman (Hartley's) selection is a miracle of compression and editorial tact

Literary Review Dickens lovers will all be grateful to Hartley for her skill and judgement.

The Independent Edited with unobtrusive intelligence and insight by Jenny Hartley

The Scotsman a marvellous volume

The Evening Standard It's a thrilling, surprisingly fresh book.

Open Letters An absolute gem ... reads better than any actual novel Dickens ever wrote ... Hartley would please a great many readers by producing a second volume from the same dragon-hoard ... A typically classy Oxford affair

Dickens Quarterly This is the book we have all been waiting for ... Every reader has his or her favourite aspect of Dickens, and may miss a particular letter or letters - I am no exception. But I do not think anyone could have made a more balanced selection from the embrarrassment of riches in his letters, or justified her choices more persuasively. We are all in Professor Hartley's debt for her magnificent edition.

Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books The 450 [letters] included in The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Jenny Hartley, are more revealing and more intimate than any biography.

<br>Jenny Hartley is Professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. Her recent Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women was a Guardian Book of the Week and hailed as "brilliant" by Claire Tomalin.<br>

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Note on the Text; Select Bibliography; A Chronology of Charles Dickens; Abbreviations and Symbols; SELECTED LETTERS; Index