A breathtaking feat of scholarship` The Times. `I can do no more than praise, recommend, insist that you buy and read this book. It supersedes all other Dickens biographies` Anthony Burgess, Independent. In Peter Ackroyd`s abridged edition of his classic biography of Charles Dickens, the acclaimed biographer takes us to the heart of one of the world`s greatest writers. From Dickens`s birth in Portsmouth to his death at the age of just fifty-eight, Ackroyd explores the life of this renowned author and the hundreds of characters who were born with Dickens but didn`t die with him, living on for ever in the pages of his books, on the radio and the television and film screens.