The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens

by Claire Tomalin

Paperback, 1991

Status

Available

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Description

Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography and scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen rescues Nelly from the shadows of history, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place, but also providing a compelling portrait of the great Victorian novelist himself. The result is a thrilling literary detective story and a deeply compassionate work that encompasses all those women who were exiled from the warm, well-lighted parlors of Victorian England.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Cariola

I have to begin by saying that I am not a Dickens fan, and as I read this book, I began to like him even less. Tomalin focuses on Dickens's relationship with the Ternan family, in particular his presumed affair with the youngest daughter, Ellen, best known as Nelly. She was only 18 at the time

their affair began, Dickens 45. The Ternans were an acting family, and Dickens used his prestige first to persuade Mrs. Ternan and the girls to perform in his play 'The Frozen Deep,' then to secure various roles for her with his theatrical friends. Before long, he abandoned his wife (the mother of his 10 children), spreading rumors about her mental health and the ingratitude of her family members for all his assistance. (Wikipedia notes, "Matters came to a head in 1858 when Catherine Dickens opened a packet delivered by a London jeweller which contained a gold bracelet meant for Ternan with a note written by her husband.") Dickens began to lead a double life, leasing and purchasing a series of homes for Nelly, her sisters and her widowed mother--homes deliberately located further and further from the public eye. After all, the man whose works were supposed to be the moral compass of England couldn't be caught with a mistress! His financial and personal arrangements were handled through coded letters to friends who acted as go-betweens, including Wilkie Collins. Nelly was kept such a deep, dark secret that her identity was even hidden when she suffered a serious injury in a train derailment while traveling with Dickens. Tomalin posits that she had at least one, and perhaps two, pregnancies by Dickens but lost both babies shortly after birth. Later in life, long after Dickens's death, Nelly supposedly confessed the affair to her pastor, saying that she greatly regretted it and loathed Dickens in those last years but could not, financially, break away.

The last section of the book addresses Nelly's life post-Dickens and the history of both the coverup and revelation of the affair.

I felt sorry for both Catherine, Dickens's long-suffering wife, and for Nelly, a young woman pressured by poverty and impressed by celebrity. As for Dickens, what a pompous, self-righteous hypocrite!

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LibraryThing member john257hopper

This is an analysis of the family background and life of Ellen (Nelly) Ternan, the young actress who was almost certainly the mistress of Charles Dickens from 1858 until his death in 1870. Tomalin pieces together a range of evidence from different sources and, while there is no smoking gun, the

circumstantial evidence for an affair seems overwhelming. Dickens's associates, in particular his sister-in-law and housekeeper, Georgina Hogarth, and his biographer John Forster, kept the affair secret during his life and after his death. Nelly went along with it, largely keeping the evidence secret until after her own death in 1914, the last of her immediate family; her son Geoffrey found out about it afterwards from examining his mother's papers and talking to the author's last surviving son, Sir Henry Dickens, and it seems to have blighted the remaining 45 years of his life. This collusion was, of course, very much the flavour of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Dickens's and his family's desire to maintain his uniformly positive public image added an edge to this drive . The book is also interesting in its coverage of the life of actresses in the early 19th century - Nelly's sisters, parents and grandparents were all in the profession, which was then regarded as very disreputable and actresses little better than whores. Interesting stuff, and good photos as well.

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LibraryThing member lilithcat

Just as good as her bio of Jane Austen, and with the added difficulty of fighting off years of Dickens' admirers either defaming Ternan or trying to bury her existence. You will not look at Dickens the same way after this book, but you may well have a better understanding of why he couldn't write a

well-rounded, psychologically full female character to save his life. As always, Tomalin tells us as much about the world in which Ternan and Dickens lived as she does about the people themselves. My edition is a later one, and has an added chapter which casts new light on the circumstances of Dickens' death. Tomalin's further investigations were spurred by the receipt of a letter she received following the book's initial publication, a letter describing a family story suggesting that Dickens did not die at Gad's Hill, but that his body had been transported there after his death. It is, of course, a story that at this juncture cannot be proved or disproved, but it is interesting to consider the steps that Tomalin took to investigate its plausibility, steps that show her to be a true scholar.

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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

Quite an interesting read about a woman who has been largely written out of Dicken's life. A woman who may or may not have been his mistress but with the secrecy surrounding her and her relationship with Dicken, and from the belief of many of the people around her (including at least one of

Dicken's children) was.

This is an interesting account of her life and the way she was written out of the story. You can see the frustration of the author as she tries to link some details together but fail because of the lack of evidence, evidence that was burnt or destroyed.

Nelly Ternan was an actress, from a family of actresses and lived on the fringes of society. When she and Dickens met (and there is evidence that they did act together, in playbills etc) her life changed, along with the life of her family. The jury is still out whether it was all a good or bad thing.

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LibraryThing member lesleynicol

This book inspired a play "Little Nell" which was performed at the Ensemble in 2009, written by Simon Grey and directed by Mark Kilmurry. The main character of Nell was played, from the age of 17 to an embittered old woman, W by Kate Fitchett and Mark Lee gave an excellent portrayal of Dickens. We

gave the play 4 stars.

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LibraryThing member Lukerik

The 1991 British Penguin paperback edition has an extra chapter on the death of Dickens not found in the first edition. My copy was printed in at least 2002 so it looks as if all British paperback editions have this extra chapter. I've not seen any foreign copy. So unless your heart's set on a

first...

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LibraryThing member timswings

Very good historical research and marvelous view on women's history and women's life in the nineteenth century.

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