Book description
The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story
of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
Winner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who
vanished into thin air. Her names, dates, family and experiences very
nearly disappeared from the record for good ...'
Claire Tomalin's multi-award-winning story of the life of Nelly
Ternan and Charles Dickens is a remarkable work of biography and
historical revisionism that returns the neglected actress to her
rightful place in history as well as providing a compelling and
truthful portrait of the great Victorian novelist.
For those who enjoyed Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and
Charles Dickens: A Life; The Invisible Woman is
invaluable reading for lovers of Charles Dickens, and for readers of
biography everywhere.
'Will come to be seen as one of the crucial women's biographies
because of its vivid dramatization of the process by which women have
been written out of history and have been forced to deny their own
experiences' Sean French, New Statesman
'The most original biography I read this year. Starting out with
scarcely the bare bones of a story, Tomalin convinces by the end that
she has got as near to the truth as anyone will' Anthony Howard,
Sunday Times
'A biography of high scholarship and compelling detective work'
Melvyn Bragg, Independent
Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed
biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary
Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine
Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly
Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A
Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn
Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former
literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday
Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.
Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She has worked in
publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first
of the
New Statesman
and then of the
Sunday Times
, which she left in 1986. She is the author of, among other books:
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
;
Shelley and His World
Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life
;
The Invisible Woman
and the extraordinarily successful biography of Samuel Pepys. Other
books written for Penguin are:
Jane Austen: A Life
and a collection of memoirs entitled
Several Strangers
.
