Charles Dickens in Love
*Starred Review* Four graves mark the conclusion of Garnett’s probing bioliterary study: the famous tomb of Charles Dickens’ in Westminster Abbey and the largely forgotten graves of three women who forever left their mark on Dickens’ books. The influence of these women indeed validates the judgment of an American visitor to the author: “A man must have really loved a woman if he would fully interpret the secrets of a woman’s heart.” The first of the women Dickens really loved, Maria Beadnell, spurned Dickens’ youthful advances—yet impressed upon his imagination the lineaments of Estella in Great Expectations. The second female inspiration in Dickens’ life, Mary Hogarth—Dickens’ sister-in-law—died young, in Dickens’ arms. Her saintly image shines forth in Agnes in David Copperfield. But Garnett devotes his most sustained inquiry to the love interest in Dickens’ life that has long been shrouded in shadows: Ellen Ternan, the young actress with whom Dickens’ developed a carefully concealed relationship. In Ternan, Garnett discerns the wellspring of the turbid but potent impulses that flow through Dickens’ most complex female characters: Lizzie in Our Mutual Friend and Helena in the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Singular scholarship teases out of tangled loves the sources of rare art. --Bryce Christensen