The Crisis That Nearly Cost Charles Dickens His Career
Among the most masterful entertainers of his age, he had an unfailing sense of what the public wanted—almost. Louis Menand on Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s “The Turning Point: 1851—A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World.”
Dickens's final novel sold 50,000 copies monthly while George Eliot and Thackeray averaged just 5,000.