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The Mystery of Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Filled with the twists, pathos and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist's extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer's death to recall the key events in his life.
In doing so, A.N. Wilson seeks to understand Dickens' creative genius and enduring popularity.
Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens' fiction drew from his own experiences. Dickens knew first-hand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage.
Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens' vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of 19th-century readers - and why they continue to resonate today.
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What listeners say about The Mystery of Charles Dickens
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall

- Nicola Bradford
- 05-08-21
Interesting character assassination!
I found this an excellent listen, absorbing and informative. It has a lot of psychological insights into Dickens's mind which I found fascinating.
1 person found this helpful
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- Sefton
- 09-26-20
Very enjoyable
Engaging book, very well voiced. A fascinating insight into Dickens. Well with the listen, imho.
1 person found this helpful
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- Mrs. Ann M. Mcmahon
- 07-03-21
Freud Meets Dickens
Frankly, one might be easily forgiven for thinking that everything worthwhile had already been said about Charles Dickens, but I have found much of fresh interest - and not a little with which to take issue - in this excellent book.
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Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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Oscar Wilde
- A Life
- By: Matthew Sturgis
- Narrated by: John Pirkis
- Length: 34 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.
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I didn’t know.…
- By James Messelbeck on 01-20-22
By: Matthew Sturgis
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Tom Stoppard
- A Life
- By: Hermione Lee
- Narrated by: Stephen Crossley
- Length: 37 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics, and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary genres: theater, radio, film, TV, journalism, and fiction. His most acclaimed creations - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Shakespeare in Love - remain as fresh and moving as when they entranced their first audiences.
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great biography
- By Aidan O'Reilly on 03-11-21
By: Hermione Lee
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Burning Boy
- The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 35 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 28.
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My New Go To - Paul Auster.
- By James Bernard Kane on 01-17-23
By: Paul Auster
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The Art of the English Murder
- From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock
- By: Lucy Worsley
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early 19th century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism.
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Should Come With a Spoiler Alert
- By Jessica on 04-15-16
By: Lucy Worsley
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Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"I don't want you to rehabilitate me," Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. "Just make me interesting." Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost 10 years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth's own breathtakingly candid confessions. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
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moved
- By Michael on 08-18-21
By: Blake Bailey
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Languages of Truth
- Essays 2003-2020
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Raj Ghatak, Salman Rushdie
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Prince Albert
- The Man Who Saved the Monarchy
- By: A. N. Wilson
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert’s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.
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Well Worth Reading
- By Mark Harrington on 06-01-22
By: A. N. Wilson
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The Invisible Woman
- The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
- By: Claire Tomalin
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted 13 years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record.
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Interesting
- By Jean on 01-21-13
By: Claire Tomalin