The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell

Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Greatest Storyteller Peter Conrad

Bloomsbury Continuum, pp.304, 20

As Charles Dickens lay in his coffin, his will was read out to the assembled mourners. ‘I conjure my friends,’ he sternly instructed them, ‘on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial or testimonial whatever.’ It’s an appeal that later generations have studiously ignored, as can be seen in the piles of commemorative merchandise that are available to purchase online.

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TaggedBiography, Bleak House, conjuring tricks, fairy tales, Humbug, London, Magic, pantomimes, The Old Curiosity Shop, Victorian literature

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The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell

Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction

Get 10 issues
for $20