We’re all Dickens all the time, here at BwB. This February 7 will be 200 since Charles Dickens, best known for having many of his work introduced by the renown G.K. Chesterton , and Julia Klein has a biographical summary based on Claire Tomalin’s literary biography, Charles Dickens: A Life. She says Dickens left his wife and family for a young woman names Nelly Ternan, an old claim that has been disputed more recently than in the past. Klein writes,

The award-winning biographer of both Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys, Tomalin writes with both force and sympathy about the moral difficulties this must have occasioned for Dickens. The marital rift was bad enough. But Dickens seemingly made matters worse by publicly vilifying his wife, Catherine, and shunning any friends who failed to take his side.