Extract of a review on The Author Who Outsold Dickens by Dr Stephen Basdeo
Ainsworth has always been a favourite of mine. Carver’s very readable book enabled me to get to know him a little better — so often when we read a novel we have no idea of the life of the author behind the book!
Yet this is not just a biography: Carver’s book is titled The Life and Work and his book functions both as a biography and, due to Carver’s analysis of Ainsworth’s novels, a companion to the many novels which Ainsworth published throughout his life.
This book is an excellent buy for any general reader who wishes to find out about the life of a famous forgotten Victorian novelist and I wish it had been around when I was doing my MA thesis, for the book will be very useful to students as well.
To read the full review, please click here – Thank you.
To buy the book, please click here (Publisher), or here (Amazon) – Cheers! 🙂
For more on Ainsworth, please see my recent piece for History Hit
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Published by Stephen Carver
Dr Stephen Carver is a literary historian, freelance editor and occasional novelist. For sixteen years he taught literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia (where he also took his doctorate), spending three years in Japan as a professor of English at the University of Fukui. He left UEA in 2012 to become Head of Online Courses at the Unthank School of Writing (a post he held until retiring from teaching in 2018), and to work with The Literary Consultancy in London, with whom he remains affiliated. He has published numerous academic articles and is the biographer of the Victorian novelist W.H. Ainsworth. His short stories have appeared in Not-Not, Cascando, Birdsuit, and Veto, and his first novel, Shark Alley, was published in 2016. He has just published a history of the 19th century underworld for Pen & Sword, and is under contract for a further book called The Author Who Outsold Dickens.
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