Claire Tomalin (born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933) is an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Read full biography of Claire Tomalin →
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.
'A Christmas Carol' has been described as the most perfect of Dickens's works and as a quintessential heart-warming story, and it is... →
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of... →
When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die.... →
When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the... →
After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.
All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.
As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.
Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.
Dickens belongs to the English people.
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
Dickens is always full of surprises.
Claire Tomalin (born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933) is an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft.