NEWS - OUT AND ABOUT

Michael Slater's acclaimed biography, Charles Dickens.

Celebrated Dickens biographer to speak at University of Leicester

Free public lecture on 25 November at 6pm

Professor Michael Slater, one of the world’s leading authorities on the life and work of Charles Dickens and author of the acclaimed new biography Charles Dickens, will deliver the annual Victorian Studies Lecture at the University of Leicester on Wednesday 25 November at 6pm.

Michael Slater has drawn on a lifetime’s study of the novelist to write the first major biography of Dickens in twenty years.

In his lecture, entitled ‘Charles Dickens: a Life Defined by Writing’, he will talk about the challenge of writing a new biography of such a familiar and much loved writer, and of his determination to focus on Dickens the author, and of a life which was, above everything else, determined and shaped by writing.

Professor Joanne Shattock, the Director of the Victorian Studies Centre in the School of English, said:

“We are delighted to welcome this distinguished Victorian scholar to the University and look forward to his lecture on what will become the standard biography of this major Victorian novelist.”

Following its publication in September 2009, Charles Dickens enjoyed excellent reviews in the British Press. Michael Slater has a world-wide reputation as an authority on the life and writings of Charles Dickens. His biography illuminates the man, the author, and the public figure.

Writer and actor Simon Callow praised the new biography in The Guardian: ‘The book is an incomparable portrait of the writing life of Dickens. Cumulatively, it is profoundly moving, chronicling the constant restless interaction between the life and the work.’ In the Times Literary Supplement, John Bowen wrote that ‘Slater, the most distinguished of modern Dickens scholars, is a master of detail’.

Charles Dickens is published by Yale University Press. Copies will be available for purchase and for signing at the wine reception which follows the lecture.

The lecture is on Wednesday 25 November at 6pm in the New Lecture Theatre, Fielding Johnson Building at the University of Leicester. It is free and open to all.

Notes to Newsdesk:

For further information about the lecture please contact Professor Joanne Shattock on 0116 252 3943 or ejs4@le.ac.uk.

Ruth Shepherd