John Forster was Charles Dickens’s closest friend and literary confidant for over thirty years, which makes his three-volume biography the most intimate and authoritative account of the novelist’s life ever written. From Dickens’s wretched childhood in the blacking factory to his triumphant final readings and sudden death in 1870, Forster traces a life of almost unimaginable energy and creative output.
As both biography and primary source, Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens remains indispensable to any serious engagement with Victorian literature. Download the complete three-volume text as a single free EPUB and read the definitive story of one of England’s greatest writers.