Product Description
The Turning Point
Author: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Format: Paperback
A Year that Changed Dickens and the World
A Times Book of the Year
The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this year will become the turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives.
The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world.
'Sparklingly informative' — Guardian
'Wonderfully entertaining' — Observer
'It is hard to imagine a better book on Dickens' — New Statesman
About the Author
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His books include Becoming Dickens, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, The Story of Alice, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, and Metamorphosis. He writes regularly for publications including The Times, the Literary Review and the Spectator. Radio and television appearances include Start the Week and The Culture Show and he has also acted as the historical consultant on TV adaptations of Jane Eyre, Emma, Great Expectations, the BBC drama series Dickensian and both of the Enola Holmes feature films for Netflix. He has judged the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize, and in 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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