The life story of Charles Dickens is, from several perspectives, a success story. Generally regarded today as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Dickens had the unusual good fortune to have been recognized by his contemporaries as well as by posterity. He was not one of the neglected artists such as Keats, doomed to wait for later generations to discover his stature. Instead, Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837), which began publication when he was twenty-four years old, was a phenomenally popular success on both sides of the Atlantic. Before he was thirty, when he had already produced five vastly scaled novels, he came to America for a visit and was accorded the most triumphant reception ever staged for a foreign visitor. As the newspapers said, even the enthusiastic reception of General Lafayette in 1824 did not equal the way Dickens was received...