On the night of June 9, 1865, a train traveling from Folkestone to London derailed on a bridge under repair at Staplehurst, sending several carriages plunging into the river below. One first-class carriage was left hanging precariously over the edge. Inside it was Charles Dickens, the most famous writer in the English-speaking world, traveling with his secret mistress, Ellen Ternan, and her mother. Dickens climbed out, retrieved his hat and the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend from the wreckage, and spent the next hours moving among the dead and dying with brandy and water, calming the injured with the same storyteller's presence that had transfixed audiences across two continents. He gave statements to the press that made no mention of his companions. Ellen Ternan's name did not appear in any account of the crash. Dickens had been hiding her existence for seven years, and he would continue to do so until his death, five years later, almost to the day. He left her a significant legacy in his will. He also left behind, for those inclined to look, a career's worth of novels that turn out, under scrutiny, to be considerably stranger, darker, and more personally revealing than the reassuring image of the great humanitarian would suggest.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is one of those writers so thoroughly absorbed into the cultural landscape that it can be genuinely difficult to see him at all. The novels are everywhere: in film adaptations, Christmas traditions, theatrical productions, and the common stock of English idiom. Oliver asking for more, Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding dress, Scrooge beside his counting house fire: these figures have achieved a mythological permanence that floats almost entirely free of the books that created them. Yet Dickens the novelist, as opposed to Dickens the cultural institution, was a far more unsettling and complicated figure than the legend allows, a writer whose comedy concealed savage anger, whose sentimentality coexisted with ruthless psychological observation, and whose championing of the poor and dispossessed was conducted by a man living a series of elaborate personal deceptions.
The gap between the public Dickens and the private one has always been wide, but recent scholarship has begun to measure it with new precision and new willingness to follow where the evidence leads. His novels, read carefully and in light of what we now know about his life, reveal a writer who was not merely observing Victorian society from a position of benevolent detachment but was embedded in its hypocrisies, its cruelties, and its silences in ways he could acknowledge only obliquely, through the pressure of fiction. The lies he told about himself turn out to illuminate the truths he was reaching for in his work, and vice versa, in ways that make him a far more interesting and far less comfortable figure than the bronze statues suggest.
To excavate that figure, we turn to Helena Kelly, a scholar celebrated for her ability to read classic authors against the grain of received opinion without losing sight of what made them great in the first place. Her book Jane Austen, the Secret Radical overturned decades of comfortable assumptions about Austen's apparent political quietism, and she brings the same forensic intelligence and archival tenacity to The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens, a provocative reexamination of Dickens's life, his writings, and the mythology he so carefully constructed around both. Currently at work on a biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, Kelly occupies a rare position in literary scholarship, equally at home in the archive and in the novel, equally attentive to what writers say and what they go to considerable lengths to conceal. In this interview, she reflects on the lies Dickens told, the truths his fiction contains, and why one of literature's most beloved figures turns out, on closer inspection, to be one of its most fascinatingly unreliable narrators of his own life.
Charles Carlini: In The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens, you challenge some long-held beliefs about Dickens. What first led you to question the traditional narrative surrounding him, and what was the most surprising discovery you made during your research?
Helena Kelly: My original plan was to write about the different places that had inspired Charles Dickens. But I came across this rather odd essay he’d written about the town where he’d grown up. Now, I happen to know that area very well because it’s also where I grew up, so I knew what he was saying wasn’t true. The whole essay was a tissue of lies. I wanted to know why. And once I started pulling on that thread, I found that quite a lot of what we think we know about him unraveled.
Probably the most surprising discovery for me was that Dickens’ extramarital relationship with the young actress Ellen Ternan was fairly common knowledge at the time. Several books claimed that it was this enormous, carefully guarded secret, but it wasn’t. There were other things in Dickens’s life that he went to great lengths to conceal.
CC: People often celebrate Dickens as a champion of the poor and marginalized. How does your book reinterpret his views on social issues, and what nuances about his perspective do you think are often overlooked?
HK: Dickens did a lot of charity work, some of it dull and deeply unglamorous (there are numerous letters about the drains at a halfway house, for example). He attended meetings, gave speeches, and arranged fundraisers. In his journalism and especially in his fiction, he identified social ills and helped inspire change.
But I suggest that at least some of this was just for show. He lived lavishly, throwing dinners and parties, buying himself expensive clothes, and sparing no expense when he traveled. He collected rich and titled acquaintances. At one point, he even helped prosecute a man who’d been writing him begging letters. He frequently wrote about characters with disabilities, and not always sympathetically. And the less said about his attitudes toward minority groups, particularly in his earlier works, the better. His political views veered all over the place, and his perspective and behavior were similarly inconsistent.
CC: Your title suggests that Dickens was a man who perhaps curated his own public image carefully. How did he shape his reputation during his lifetime, and in what ways was that image misleading or exaggerated?
HK: The most obvious example comes during the breakdown of his marriage in the late 1850s when, as rumors swirled, he embarked on a massive PR blitz. Multiple press releases pushed his own sanitized version of events. He coerced his in-laws into signing a statement that all the rumors were completely unfounded and leaked it to the newspapers. He even sent his speaking agent to the United States with a ‘private’ letter to show people, alleging that his wife was suffering from a ‘mental disorder’.
However, you can find him attempting similar manipulations throughout his career, exploiting every medium at his disposal—newspapers, speeches, charitable performances, and the prefaces of his own novels. He concealed or deliberately confused the details of his childhood and pretended that whispers about his mental or physical health were nonsense, when, in fact, it seems likely they probably weren’t. Accusations of plagiarism, or that contributions by others to his work had gone unacknowledged, received various responses, ranging from professed amusement to wounded self-defense to counter-accusations. He even started not one but two of his own magazines and increasingly invited other authors to produce collaborations, shoring up his influence in the literary world.
Like modern influencers, Dickens had a brand to protect. He was a family man, the patron saint of Christmas, genial, generous Boz. The truth was much messier.
CC: Dickens had complicated relationships, especially with the women in his life. How do you explore these in your book, and what do they reveal about his character and personal life?
HK: The central argument I make in my book is that, by far, the most important relationship in Dickens’ life was his relationship with his public. In the end, almost everything and everyone else was sacrificed to it. But his relationships never seemed to have been easy, particularly with women. His jealousy stemmed from the perceived favoritism shown to his older sister, Fanny, who was sent to study at the Royal College of Music. He barely acknowledged the existence of his younger sister, Harriet, who died when he was fifteen. He fell out with his first love, Maria Beadnell, and picked arguments with her female friends. The letters he wrote to his wife, Catherine, during their engagement veered between nauseating baby talk and scolding.
We wouldn’t be going far wrong, I think, if we identify him as having an insecure attachment style. And after fame came along, with all the associated pressures, that only intensified. When his wife’s sister, Mary, suddenly died in their house, he suffered some kind of nervous collapse, for all the world as if he were the chief mourner. Admittedly, it must have come as a shock, and there’s a possibility he may have been suffering from poor mental health at the time, but he maintained his obsessive grief for years. Then, the Dickens household absorbed Georgina, the second of Catherine's sisters, into their home in her teens, where she continued to live with her brother-in-law after her sister left. There were persistent rumors of an illicit relationship between the pair. He seems to have tried to do something similar with Ellen Ternan and her sisters, as well, at least initially. He insinuated himself into the lives of all three of them, turning their attention and affection away from each other and onto himself. It was far more about power and control than anything else. And of course, he made a horrible final gesture toward Ellen: he named her in his will, knowing it would be widely reported in the newspapers. It effectively destroyed what reputation she had left.
Certainly, we’re not looking at someone who could maintain normal, healthy relationships. But one of his brothers ended up in the divorce courts at a time when that was still very rare. Another brother simply abandoned his wife and moved to another country. I think they had grown up with some strange, damaging ideas.
CC: Many readers see Dickens as a moral authority through his vivid critiques of Victorian society. To what extent do you believe he truly embodied the values he espoused in his novels?
HK: Dickens could be charming, witty, and extremely generous, but he was forever falling out with people, and he could be unspeakably cruel and vindictive. Setting aside his treatment of his wife and Ellen Ternan, this is a man who, rather than attending his brother’s funeral, chose to go to the dentist instead. He refused to attend his eldest son’s wedding. He shipped his younger sons off to the far corners of the empire in their mid-teens and complained about them to anyone who would listen. Does this negate his critiques of society? I don’t think so. He wouldn’t be the first person to struggle to live up to his ideals.
CC: In what ways did Dickens’ own experiences, such as his time working in a blacking factory as a child, influence the themes of hardship and resilience in his novels? Do you think he ever exaggerated these experiences?
HK: I spent quite a lot of time digging into the blacking factory story as told to us by Dickens' friend and biographer John Forster. This is the only source we have, aside from the similar scenes in David Copperfield, and I was concerned to discover how many problems there were with it. The dates don’t add up, some events certainly took place but aren’t mentioned, and there’s very little independent evidence to corroborate it at all—some that seems to contradict it.
So, did Dickens exaggerate? Well, people do, especially writers, but there was a huge amount of insecurity, and even trauma, in Dickens' formative years, far more than appears in Forster’s biography, and this stretched all through his teens. Dickens' father did go to debtors' prison, and Dickens was probably sent to work at the blacking factory. He was left to shoulder responsibilities long before he was ready for them. What he did in his fiction—and I suspect, in what he told Forster—was compress those disparate experiences to make better stories. Possibly, he couldn’t help himself: it was his job, after all.
CC: Your book sheds light on some of Dickens' contradictions, including his passion for reform versus his ambitions and flaws. How did these contradictions shape his writing and the legacy he left behind?
HK: I think that, in many ways, the contradictions are what drive Dickens’s writing and part of the reason his legacy has endured so long. He talks in one essay about feeling an "attraction of repulsion," and for me, that’s a revealing phrase. At times, he seems to have suffered from very poor mental health, possibly worsened by substance abuse—he was never tranquil, never at ease. Even when he was rich, celebrated, and living a comfortable life, he was drawn to walk the city streets at night, visiting squalid places and witnessing terrible things. He was compelled, and on some level, he must have known that this was what enabled him to create such compelling stories.
Of course, his need for praise, public admiration, power, and influence also drove him to do a great deal for charity, to foster the careers of other writers through his magazines, and to write—and keep writing.
CC: Victorian England was complex and changing, and people viewed Dickens as its great chronicler. How does your portrayal of Dickens’ life complicate the idea of him as a spokesperson for his age?
HK: Critics quickly acclaimed Dickens as the writer of his age, uniquely attuned to the spirit of the times. But being a chronicler or spokesperson demands a degree of distance and disinterest—qualities Dickens lacked. Whatever his subject—street children, aristocrats, factories, soldiers, or prisons—he always kept one eye on the Victorian public and the other on his own reputation.
CC: In what ways did Dickens’ desire for fame and approval impact his storytelling choices, and do you think this ever compromised the artistic integrity of his work?
HK: While still working on his first full-length book, Dickens was catapulted to a level of fame and critical adulation that most authors can only dream of. It was a position he couldn’t realistically hope to maintain, but that didn’t stop him from trying—writing five novels in five years and then, almost inevitably, burning out.
After a few misfires, he returned with A Christmas Carol and unwittingly created another challenge for himself. Responding to public demand, Dickens began producing Christmas stories almost every year, eventually relying on multiple co-authors. One or two of his shorter contributions—like the ghost story The Signalman—are very good. Most, however, have rightfully faded into obscurity.
CC: What do you hope readers will take away from your book, particularly in terms of reevaluating Dickens as both a man and an author?
HK: In recent years, Dickens has come dangerously close to being cancelled, and not without reason. His treatment of his wife, Catherine, and of Ellen Ternan, the woman widely assumed to have been his mistress, along with quite a few others in his life, was undeniably cruel. Both in his private and public writing, he sometimes expresses racist and anti-Semitic views. To modern eyes, the way he portrays characters with disabilities is deeply troubling.
But I think that some of the things he didn’t want us to know, some of the things he succeeded for years in distracting us from, might be enough to make us hesitate over that cancel button. Even some of his most unacceptable tendencies, while not remotely excusable, are more complicated than we’d thought. I hope readers might feel they’ve been given a way to access some of those more challenging Dickens texts.
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