Rating: 
Summary: This will not do.
Review: I read only the first 100 pages before abandoning this. Ackroyd writes in an irritating punchy style with many 1-word sentences to show emphasis. This aggressive style was offensive, and at time condescending. It also was distracting. The story is supposed to be about Dickens, after all. The author is prolix, self-indulgent and more interested in establishing his own originality than that of Dickens. Less rhetoric and a steadier narrative are called for, with much less high-flown speculations. Can anyone recommend a good biography of Dickens?
Rating: 
Summary: A Living Biography
Review: I was appalled to learn that Peter Ackroyd's fabulous biography, "Dickens" is out of print. After finishing this book, I feel that I know Charles Dickens better than I know many real people with whom I come into constant contact. The detail and sensitivity of this work have not been equalled by any other biography I have ever read. If you can find a copy of this book, then buy it, whether you are a Dickens fan or not! You will be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: As definitive as biography gets
Review: It's a rare biography that leaves you with the feeling that there's nothing more that could be said about its subject. This is one of them. It helps that Ackroyd has so much space to work with. (In this respect, it's like Jackson J. Benson's "The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer" - also shamefully out of print.) But utimately it's a function of Ackroyd's profound understanding of the various aspects of Dickens' character and genius. The occasional veering into fantasia is a bold experiment that, in my opinion, fails decisively but these brief chapters are infrequent and simple to skip. They are a trivial blemish on the face of this monument of scholarship and imagination.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best (and most unusual) biographies in English
Review: It's absolutely shocking Peter Ackroyd's magisterial and magical biography of Charles Dickens has fallen out of print: I think I had more pure readerly pleasure reading this work than just about any biography or novel I've read in the last fifteen years. This is really a one-of-a-kind work: Ackroyd writes his life of Dickens as if it were a Dickens novel, and the descriptions of Dickens's London and Rochester spill out in page after page of densely glorious prose. It's a long book, and it is not lightly undertaken, and Ackroyd does some very out-of-fashion gestures here (like profess his belief in Dickens' genius, as other reviewers have noted) very readily. But I can't think of a biography I would recommend more highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the same book
Review: The book I read is not the same one reviewed by some others. I read the 2003 edition, which has only about 200 pages. It is beautifully produced on thick, glossy paper and lavishly illustrated. There are no episodes in which Dickens meets his characters or dead authors.I read the Edgar Johnson bio years ago and loved it. Ackroyd's book, at least this edition, doesn't seem to go into as much detail. He does, however, gush (as a previous reviewer said) and presents Dickens as a tormented soul who could not be still and neither a loving husband nor a loving father.
Rating:
Summary: REVIEW OF PETER ACKROYD'S DICKENS BY JOHN CHUCKMAN
Review: There are some oddities in the style of Mr. Ackroyd, and his book contains some, what might be called, experimental chapters, fantasies or dreams or prose poems on subjects the author associates with Dickens. Ordinarily, I would find these things a bit off-putting.
But Mr. Ackroyd succeeds in giving us an overwhelmingly animated and penetrating portrait of the great Victorian author. This huge book - and no smaller effort could capture Dickens' spirit - crackles with energy, the very kind of driving energy so characteristic of Dickens himself.
Dickens was a strange man with immense drives and desires going off in many directions and personal habits that might well at times be regarded as unbalanced. He was not the sentimental, storytelling Victorian father figure he is sometimes regarded, although he could be quite sentimental about family and friends and his storytelling ability had few equals.
He behaved at times as a petty tyrant and was highly opinionated, always a man of immense curiosity, a traveler, a political activist, a generous man, a workaholic, a man eager for every possible shred of success and acclaim, a talented actor and mimic, a man seemingly possessed at times, as when carrying on conversations with himself, imitating his own characters in a mirror or going for walks as long as twenty miles alone or living with the ghosts of his fractured childhood.
A whirlwind of experience and desires helped make this naturally talented man such a great novelist. There are similarities to the titanic storm that was Beethoven. In both cases, the young man in his first blush of success could be truly charming while the aging figure could be quite unsettling.
The book contains many interesting anecdotes and details of Dickens' England, as well as Dickens' America since he made two journeys to America, a place he both hated and was fascinated by.
Highly recommended to all lovers of good biography, all students of English literature, and all students of English history.
Rating:
Summary: how could it be out of print?
Review: This book, in my opinion, is not only the finest biography of Dickens, it is arguably the finest and most sensitive biography ever written. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in Dickens. From the moment I began this book, from the point I read Ackroyd's comments on the apparent fact that we would all be literally "sick" with the smells, sounds, filth etc. if we were transported back to Dickens' era, I knew I was reading the work of a wirter who had almost literally been there, with Dickens and his family and confreres, and who was utterly devoted to his material. Until I read this book, I had never been able to get through a Dickens novel. Once I had finished the book, I proceeded to read all of Dickens I could lay my hands on (enthralled), and am currently re-reading the biography. The book proves what I have always believed - novelists write the best biography - and the best history, as well (e.g., Shelby Foote on the Civil War). Shame on publishing for letting this fine work lapse.
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