3 Comments
User's avatar
Lev Raphael's avatar

In his lifetime, as famous as he was, he was outsold by the now-unreadable Bulwer-Lytton. So bizarre!

Expand full comment
Lacy Arnett Mayberry's avatar

Very bizarre! Have you read Zadie Smith’s The Fraud? That is about another Dickens contemporary who apparently is also now unreadable. So interesting!

Expand full comment
Lev Raphael's avatar

I haven't read Smith's novel, but I have read about Wm. Ainsworth and he did outsell Dickens, but only in the 1830s and 1840s. I think Bulwer-Lytton had a longer run which ended with WWI. His life, though is more interesting than his fiction. :-)

Expand full comment