Charles Dickens. My Early Years. Peter Rowland (Complied and Edited). Aurum Press (1997)

Given Charles Dickens' fascination with himself and his towering talent it is notable that he never wrote a full scale autobiography. He wrote a fragment which he gave to his friend and first biographer, John Forster, wrote a disguised version of his childhood in David Copperfield and wrote and spoke of his early adult life in letters, articles and speeches. Peter Rowland has doe a great job of assembling the fragments into as continuous a whole as could be managed.
Charles Dickens writing about Charles Dickens is as wonderfully engaging and astonishing as Charles Dickens writing about any of the cast that swagger through his astounding novels. That is the vibrant pleasure and deep frustration of the writing, it is clear that the person being spoken about or written about is essentially a character in a narrative, a beautifully crafted narrative of course.
Dickens is as funny, acute, charming and sentimental about himself as he is about any of his fictional children, he can freely deal with himself once the topic  never strays near to the open would of his childhood that never healed. When he writes of the events that he thought would prevent him from ever achieving the greatness he felt he could and should achieve everything changes. There is no distance to the past, no careful staging of the events for maximum effect, there is only raw fear and pain.
It is very easy to see a colossal overreaction to a short lived event that arose from very ordinary circumstances and was finished for very ordinary reasons. Dickens'parents, his father in particular, was a man who loved to spend money, his own and any he could borrow from others. He spent in on being social and convivial, entertaining friends and being a gracious host. He lead his family from relative security in a government job to poverty and debt, living a life of hiding from creditors and constantly moving to different cheaper lodgings. Dickens mother had a relative who had a shoe polish business and she got Charles a job there, some time later after a row his father removed Dickens from the factory and put him in school.
Hardly a story of slavery and abuse, it scorched a hole in the life of Charles Dickens that never went cold and he was  haunted and tormented by it for all of his life.
Charles Dickens always has a very powerful sense of his own innate talents, a sense that he would be someone, that others would recognise and acknowledge his talent, something that they would never do based on his social circumstances. Talent alone would be the path to success, social and financial and he knew that he had the energy, will and talent to succeed. Dickens felt that being sent to work in the shoe polish was closing the door on that prospect and keeping him locked in the life his parents were leading. He was right on both counts and this was inflamed by his powerlessness in the face of the actions of adults.
Charles Dickens did have a burning talent and the will to realise it, if he had remained in the factory he would have had essentially no chance of doing so, the leap up to social acceptable literary life from that point was too great. Dickens never forgot that it was chance that his father took him out of the factory and that his mother wanted him to be sent back.
The pieces, skilfully complied and edited by Peter Rowland in this book reveal Charles Dickens as he wished to be seen and as he never wished to be be know and they make a moving and wonderful partial self portrait of one of the monumental writers in history.

Anothe Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire. Melisa Klimszewski (Editor). Kathryn Huges (Foreword) . Hesperus Press Limited (2008)

This glorious anthology of stories were all first published as a Christmas Special in 1853 by Household Words magazine edited by Charles Dickens. It was a commercial venture, a Christmas edition of short stories by well known authors was a popular move. The stories are not thematically linked to the season, they are stories intended to please the audience of the day.
The Schoolboy's Story by Charles Dickens manages to have a clear voice in the unnamed narrator, a sentimental framing around an extraordinary examination of the brutal and tribal psychology of schoolboys  all working together much as bitter dark chocolate still gives the lift of a sweet.
The Old Lady's Story by Eliza Lynn Linton crams a full length Gothic romance novel into a short story without sacrificing any of the essentials, which is am amazing accomplishment.
Over the Way's Story by George A. Sala is a wonderful mash up of Beauty and the Beast with A Christmas Carol that pulls off that unlikely pairing with wit and flair.
The Angel's Story by Adelaide Anne Procter is rather odd poem about the death of a child. Reading it outside of its native context of high child mortality and strong popular religious observance makes it a little horrifying rather than comforting which was the intent.
The Squire's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell has a get set up, sharp reveal and superbly and credibly nasty lead character. Nothing extra and nothing left out, astonishing craft in writing a short story.  
Uncle George's Story by Edmund Saul Dixon and W.H. Wills is a slight piece that is competently written but feels very dated and a little lackluster.
The Colonel's Story by Samuel Sydney manages a decent plot in a short space without proving a memorable cast or anything else to pull in a reader.
The Scholar's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell and Reverend William Gaskell is a romantic ballad about jealousy, obsession and murder and a good fun read.
Nobody's Story by Charles Dickens is a bitter and bleak piece about the Unknown Citizen, there is nothing sentimental about it, the language is old fashioned , the anger is right up to date.
This wonderful anthology is a tribute to the editorial skills of Charles Dickens as much as anything. That a group of stories written for a very specific context shine as brightly now , for the most part, as then points out his eye for talent and how to gather it together.

The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits. Mike Ashley (Editor). Constable and Robinson (2007)

This is a hugely enjoyable anthology of murder and mystery stories that take elements from Charles Dickens's life and works as their starting points. The spine of the book is the chronology of Dickens's life, the short and informative introductions by Mike Ashley provide the context for each story. The quality of the stories is uniformly excellent, there are a number of stand out entries. There is an enjoyable variety in the tone and strategy chosen by the writers. Some of the stories pick up directly on events from Dickens's life, others use characters from his stories and some blur the distinction very nicely. All of the writers are sufficiently confident to ensure that none of the stories feel like a Dickens's knock-off. Some of the stories match more closely to Dickens's writing patterns than others, they carry it off because the intent is flavour rather than straight imitation.
"Awaiting the Dawn" by Marilyn Todd, a superbly structured story that uses Dickens's response to the public execution of Fredrick and Maria Manning for murder is one of the stand out entries in the collection. It packs a very considerable amount into a short space without ever being crowded and has a breathtaking heroine. "Miss Havisham's Revenge" by Alanna Knight is gripping and horrifying, it takes one of Dickens's great characters and without any violence to the original casts a superb and ghastly light on their life beyond the novel.
"Tom Wasp and The Swell Mob" by Amy Myers draws a sad contrast between the inspiration that Dickens used for a famous character and the short and desperate life of a girl from the slums. "Encounter in the Dark" by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre is an astonishing story that centers around a possible meeting between Charles Dickens ans Edgar Allen Poe, this is a grim story that allows both complicated artists shine brightly.
My favourite story in the collection is "The End of Little Nell" by Robert Barnard, it is sharp, funny and a wonderful reminder of the acid truth in Oscar Wilde's famous remark about the death of the girl who was simply too good to live. This collection is superb fun in its own right, as a reminder of the unparalleled pleasures of Charles Dickens's novels it scores a double header.

Bleak House. BBC Worldwide Limited 1996. DVD Acorn Media UK (2006)

A great cast in a great story combine to produce an engaging and substantial television drama. The single most impressive aspect to this production is how the creative team resisted the temptation to film the book. They have created a superb television drama that stands apart from the book on its own merits. Charles Dickens may well be my favourite author, I really enjoyed Bleak House, it is a great novel, as a book it would be a terrible television drama. It is too widespread and generous, Arthur Hopcraft has done an expert job of filleting the book to create a effective and gripping drama.

A dispute over a will lies at the heart of the drama, the case is being heard in the Court of Chancery, a civil court system that dealt with disputed wills among other types of disputes. The slow grinding process of the Chancery is the source of anger that runs through the drama, the case is also the spiderweb that connects and traps the extensive cast. The connections, sometimes obvious, sometimes very subtle that connect the poorest, Jo a boy who sweeps a path through the rubbish on the street to Lady Deadlock, wife of a aristocrat and a great lady are explored with a nice sweep and flourish, the plot is elegant and thoughtful and it arises directly from the on-going actions of the characters.

The actors take to their meaty roles with great energy and tremendous skill, Peter Vaughan is outstanding as the silkily venomous solicitor, Tulkinghorn, Diana Rigg is luminous as Lady Deadlock who finds that her life is steadily unravelling around her, Denholm Elliott proves that a good man can be an interesting one. They are just a few of the extraordinary performances in the drama, they bring the huge cast from the book to vivid and singular life. The pacing is deliberate and effective, the story is given the room to develop and expand while never losing focus. Hours of pleasure.