Author:Henry James,Andrew Taylor
one of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous short stories and novels.
Witty and intelligent
—— GuardianA very funny novel
—— The Times Literary SupplementUnusual and intriguing
—— Sunday TimesThere were never such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination...you can never quite forget them
—— W. Somerset MaughamDickens is huge - like the sky. Pick any page of Dickens and it's immediately recognizable as him, yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a murderer - or any combination of these
—— Susannah ClarkeDickens did what very few writers have managed to not only describe a city, but to define it... His experience was the Victorian nightmare made real: a swift descent from relative safety and affluence to utter penury and humiliation. The horror never left him. You can see in David Copperfield, as well as in Great Expectations and Nicholas Nickleby, this very real fear of slipping down the social scale... Dickens, for all his sentimentality, was an extraordinary person, inseparable inthe imagination from London, just as London is inseparable from Dickens
—— Time OutDickens has genius to vivify his observation
—— SpectatorHe deals truly with human nature, which never can degrade; he takes up everything, good, bad, or indifferent, which he works up into a rich alluvial deposit. He is natural, and that never can be ridiculous
—— Quarterly ReviewI came to Dickens relatively late in life, but in a way, I think that's the best time. When you're a child, all you see is the plum-pudding characterization and twisting-and-turning storylines, and though that is part of the juicy pleasure of Dickens, you need to be an adult to get the heartbreaking measure of his genius. And nothing shows that more, for me, than David Copperfield. It's the fullest, most breathtakingly truthful story of life - not for nothing was it Freud's favorite novel.
—— Nigella LawsonThe funniest writer ever to put words to paper
—— Hugh LaurieThe greatest comic writer ever
—— Douglas AdamsP.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century
—— Sebastian FaulksSublime comic genius
—— Ben EltonYou don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour
—— Stephen FryWodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in
—— Evelyn WaughLovely
—— Daily TelegraphMoving and intelligent
—— IndependentMagnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners
—— CosmopolitanJewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction
—— GlamourFans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into
—— Sunday Telegraph