Dickens the Enchanter by Peter Conrad

Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller

by Peter Conrad

Bloomsbury 2025

The central idea of Peter Conrad's new book Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller (the US cover design very helpfully shows a picture of Dickens and a picture of an explosion. Sigh) seems to be a straightforward project of hagiography: Charles Dickens was not, or not merely, the most successful author of the Victorian era but something more, an enchanter whose ambition “was at once metaphysically bold and endearingly humane: he sets his novels to relitigate creation and to regenerate a weary world.”

Skeptical readers, if there are any left when it comes to Dickens, might gulp a bit at such bizarre over-claiming, just as they might join, for instance, Kafka in questioning either the metaphysical boldness or especially the endearing humanity, being unable to ignore what Kafka referred to as the “heartlessness behind his sentimentally overflowing style,” the “rude characterizations” stamped on every character major and minor, “without which Dickens would not be able to get on with his story for even a moment.”

But such skepticism has been bouncing off Dickens the author for well on 200 years leaving hardly a scratch where there ought to be deep furrows. Every year, at least one book will come forward doing just what Conrad's does: earnestly appreciating, one might say gushing over, the artistry, the humanity, the profundity, and maybe even the dentistry of this cultural icon. The authors of these books immediately set about shoring up their faith claims with a British Library's worth of substantiation, combing through the great man's works for every little detail, including combs. Dickens the Enchanter doesn't even make its way to 300 pages, and yet there are dozens of passages of do-you-remember wonkery on dozens of subjects. This creates a strong clubby impression, that this is not just a love letter to Dickens but a love letter aimed almost exclusively at Dickens-lovers. It's strong literary reading of the author's works, but it's often also Trivia Night down at the Hare & Hounds:

The seamstress Miss Knag in Nicholas Nickleby recalls an uncle who possessed 'the most symmetrical feet', matching 'those which are usually joined to wooden legs'; her employer Madame Mantalini acidly comments that 'They must have had something of the appearance of club feet.' While scattily reminiscing about people whose vanity extends to their legs, Mrs. Nickleby cites poor Miss Biffin, then reconsiders: 'I think she has only toes, but the principle is the same.' Can you have toes without legs? Perhaps so, if you think that the body is modular or custom-made, as Dickens did.

The solution to the riddle, somebody might want to tell Conrad, isn't floating toes: it's hurried, sloppy writing, and it's not exactly rare in Dickens. Critics have tried, over the decades, to point this out. When it comes to Dickens, as George Saintsbury wrote over a century ago, those critics have found it their duty “to object to his faults most strongly, who think his sentiment too often worse than mawkish, and his melodrama not seldom more than ridiculous; who rank his characters too close to 'character parts,' in the lower theatrical sense; who consider his style too often tawdry; his satire strained, yet falling short or wide of its object; his politics unpractical and, sometimes, positively mischievous; his plots either non-existent or tediously complicated for no real purpose; who fully admit the quaint unreality of his realism and the strange 'some-other-worldliness' of much of his atmosphere …”

The list could go on, but it hardly matters if you're already invoking magic. Conrad's enchanter never sleeps; he's relitigating creation and regenerating a weary world until you worry he might herniate himself. No detail is too small for the magic touch. “The laggard progress of lawsuits in Chancery in Bleak House reminds the narrator of fairy tales in which time stands still, as it does for Rip Van Winkle or Sleeping Beauty,” Conrad writes. “Although the court's slow grind may be frustrating, suspended time is a means of enchantment.”

As is probably self-evident from its title, Dickens the Enchanter is a bought juror, a fixed trial, a well-primed studio audience. If you don't buy the “enchanter” part at the outset, you'll certainly find no other Dickens in these pages. And if you do buy the “enchanter” part, you'll find a lively fellow fan in Peter Conrad.

 Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News