description: When Ellen Ternan met Charles Dickens, she was 18 and he was 45. She was a hard-working actress in a society that equated her profession with prostitution, or something close to it. Dickens was the most lionized writer in England, the great bard of domestic virtue. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens' marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record. In this tour de force of scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT and KATHERINE MANSFIELD rescues Nelly from the shadows of history and creates a deeply compassionate work that encompasses all those women who were exiled from the warm, well-lighted parlors of Victorian England. "As social history, literary criticism, and, not least, an absorbing detective story, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is a wonderful book." (Newsday)
language: English
title: The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Charles Dickens & Nelly Ternan
titlecomplete: The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Charles Dickens & Nelly Ternan
characters: Charles Dickens
genres: 19th Century, Biography, History, British Literature, Historical, Romance, Womens, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Victorian
ratings_count: 1642
awards: awardedAt: 662716800000
name: NCR Book Award, awardedAt: 631180800000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Biography, awardedAt: 662716800000
name: Hawthornden Prize
publisher: Books on Tape