The Invisible Woman : The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep , and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography and scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen rescues Nelly from the shadows of history, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place, but also providing a compelling portrait of the great Victorian novelist himself. The result is a thrilling literary detective story and a deeply compassionate work that encompasses all those women who were exiled from the warm, well-lighted parlors of Victorian England. This volume is a biography of Ellen "Nelly" Ternan, who was for the last thirteen years of Charles Dickens's life, was his secret obsession and intimate companion. She was an actress but within a few years of meeting Dickens she left the stage and disappeared from public view. Her disappearance was considered essential for the protection of Dickens's good name with a public that idolized him. Nelly's three lives - as child actress, as hidden love and as ultra-respectable wife and mother - span the whole of the Victorian and Edwardian ages. Until now her story has been considered only in the light of its impact on Dickens. For the first time, the author has chosen to look at Nelly's story from her own point of view. This book is at once biography, literary criticism and social history, and contains an original and extraordinary account of the theatrical world that both nurtured Nelly and held Dickens in thrall throughout his life