"Dickens is the highest poetic expression of the English tradition between the heroic century of Napoleon, the glorious past, and imperialism, the dream of his future. (....) Only when one hates the hypocritical narrow-mindedness of Victorian culture from the bottom of one's soul can one appreciates with full admiration the genius of a man who compelled us to find this disgusting world of sated sluggishness interesting and almost endearing, who redeemed life's most banal prose into poetry." A biographical masterpiece: The biography of Charles Dickens in the famous, lively, novelistic style of Stefan Zweig.