Forster 1872

John Forster. The Life of Charles Dickens. Pub. 1872. Ed. JWT Ley. London: Cecil Palmer, 1928.

• 455 strange chance: CD’s son Sydney (b. April 1847) was given the nickname "Ocean Spectre" and later died at sea (this also being the period when Dombey was being written)
• 456-7 putting on Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour at Manchester for Leigh hunt
• 459 draft of an account of the play in the voice of Mrs Gamp archived here in the biography
• 464 5 Sept 1847 mentions to F doing a cheap edition of Goldsmith’s works if he biography goes well along with Fielding, Smollett, Sterne: "it is one of the dim notions fluctuating within me"
• 466 end of Aug-beginning of Sept 1847: difficulties with cheap preface to Pickwick; debating whether to pause Dombey to work on Haunted Man as Xmas book (he put it aside til 1848)
• * he would have been working on #12, establishing antipathy between Dombey and Edith when they return from honeymoon
• 467 chairing Leeds Mechanics’ Society mtg 1 Dec 47 l/u
• Lord John Russell’s (PM first time 1846-52) liberality to authors in this period l/u
• 471 conception of Dombey

...it was to do with Pride what its predecessor [Chuzzlewit] had done with Selfishness. But this limit he soon overpassed; and the succession of independent groups of character, surprising for the variety of their forms and handling, with which he enlarged and enriched his plan, went far beyond the range of the passion of Mr. Dombey and Mr. Dombey’s second wife. 

• notes "under-estimates" of the novel, that the "pace" fell off after #5 when Paul dies and that Taine said Dombey’s mending at the end "spoils a fine novel"
• plan in letter of 25 July 1846
• 484 dynamic system of composition: altering intention with Walter and with Edith (the latter apparently in response to feedback from Jeffrey that he couldn’t believe she’d be Carker’s mistress)