Like the other three Holmes novels, this book is a masterpiece. Sure, it is old (over 100 years, in fact) but, being Holmes, it will always be as fresh and exciting as it was the day it was released. Although all the Holmes stories are great, and you will have a good time reading any of them, I reccommend reading the books in chronological order (this can be conveniently done with the omnibus The Complete Sherlock Holmes), it will only serve to make you like the stories even more.

Anyways, this is the second Holmes story, and it is a page-turner, full of suspense. Also, it delivers the kind of intrigue and "how did he know that! " disbelief that only a Sherlock Holmes story can generate. It is because of this, and the stunning detail in which he is described throughout the 60 Holmes stories, that the hardcore readers of the Holmes stories cannont alltogether accept him as fictional. No character in the history of fiction has ever been more real to his readers, and none ever will be. Many Holmes fans have been known to feel remorse, even sadness upon visiting the Rickenback Fall (where Doyle originally tried to kill Holmes). That may sound fanciful, but indulge yourself in the 60 Holmes stories (including this one-one of the best) and see if you fall into that category.

As the second full-length story of Doyle's Holmes series, this book is a classic. It lacks the landmark status of A Study in Scarlet and the overall drama of The Hound of the Baskervilles, but nevertheless is a must-read for all Holmes fans and is strongly recommended to fans of detective fiction. The crime scene is a classic -- "Watson, when you have eliminated all other possibilities, the remaining possibility, no matter how seemingly improbable, is nevertheless likely".... or something like that.

While A Study in Scarlet deals rather unmercifully with the Mormon colony in Utah, A Sign of Four presents what would now be considered a strikingly politically incorrect perspective on India. It's an historically interesting British viewpoint from late in the last century.

Whether you read a public copy or get it from the University of Virginia on-line archive, I strongly recommend A Sign of Four. It's a quick read, and certainly a better option for spare time than Holmes' seven percent solution.

A classic Holmes novel, this book is perhaps one of Sherlock's most puzzling mysteries. As told by Dr. Watson, this mystery may have been one of Holmes's toughest cases yet.

As Sherlock is injecting cocaine into his blood system, he sits down with placid relief, until there is a knock at the door. In enters the beautiful Mary Morstan, whom Watson immediately takes a fancy to. While Watson observes her beauty, Holmes observes her problem. It seems that she is a rather middle-class woman, with style and father in the military, who is currently stationed in India. He had recently wrote to her saying that he would come to visit. However, he never showed up when she went to pick him up. That was ten years ago. But starting six years ago, four years after his disappearance, Miss Morstan had been receiving mysterious packages containing pearls of great value, one a year. Having been contacted by her mysterious complimentor, should she go and meet him? Or should she stay home? The truth lies with in the book.

This book is a triumph for the celebrated novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I believe that many people would enjoy this book. Just to be specific, it would mainly be for people who are in the age group of around: 13 or older, and also those who are fond of the mystery novels and thrillers and anyone who could use a good book.

Ackroyd uses the eighteenth century forger-poet, Thomas Chatterton, as the main subject of a stylish examination of how humans can conjure up pasts which suit their sense of romance rather than dealing with the mundane facts, and somewhat paradoxically, how they can accept present appearances without question.

As with other novels by Ackroyd ("The Great Fire of London" and "Hawksmoor" for example), past periods both intersect with and influence the present. Ackroyd's London both lives in the present and lives through, or with, its past: what we perceive as present reality is in essence a mixture of now and then.

The story flows between:

- the present, when the discovery of a supposed portrait of the middle-aged Chatterton (who in fact died in his teens) sets off an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the poet's death;

- Chatterton's boyhood and youth in eighteenth century Bristol and London; and

- a Victorian painter working on a depiction of Chatterton's death.

As the investigation unfolds and the time periods mix, truth and reality become unreliable: our view of the both past and present is incomplete, we have to rely on sources who may themselves be unreliable and fill in the gaps by use of our own imagination. The result of this is that we either take things on trust and/or let our imaginations run wild. Thus we can be duped - as Chatterton duped contemporary audiences.

Did Thomas Chatterton, one of the great forger/poets of the 18th century, die of an overdose of laudanum in 1770? Or did he fake his own death and continue merrily publishing work under the names of recently deceased poets?

When novelist George Meredith posed as Chatterton in Henry Wallace's painting "The Death of Chatterton," is it true that the painter made off with his oblivious model's wife?

In the present day, were the papers found by poetaster Charles Wychwood in Bristol really the confessions of Chatterton written in his own hand? And what about that painting of Chatterton as a middle-aged man? (He was supposedly 17 when he died.)

Will literary "resurrectionist" Harriet Scrope succeed in taking Wychwood's work on Chatterton and passing it off as her own, just as Stewart Merk merrily signed the dead painter Seymour's name to his own work?

Why am I asking so many questions?

Because there are no answers. That's all right, though, because the questions are great; and they just keep on coming. If you read this book, you will sink deep into a morass of counterfeiting, fraud, and outright fakery.

Be prepared to be bamboozled ... and entertained.

Thomas Chatterton was a real 18th-century poet. As a teenager he invented a 15th-century poet, Thomas Rowley and wrote poems in an appropriately archaic style. As a young man he went off to London, wrote poems and short stories, but could not sell enough of his work to make a living and committed suicide by eating arsenic. The poems of Rowley were collected and published after Chatterton's death, but it was not until the third edition that it was revealed the poems were entirely Chatterton's invention and his short and tragic life was embraced by the Romantics: Keats wrote a sonnet to Chatterton, Wordsworth used him in a poem, and he was the subject of Oscar Wilde's last lecture.

It is not surprising that Peter Ackroyd would be interesting in writing a novel about Chatterton's life, since the author has long been interested in masks, impersonation, and other ways of presenting a public pretense. Consequently, this is not a historical novel, although it deals with real people and real times. After all, little is really known about Chatterton beyond his poems. Obviously dissatisfied with the time and place of his birth, Chatterton creates Rowley as a way of improving his lot in life, or, at least, that is clearly his intention. But in the real world Chatterton cannot function. He takes pride in writing political satires that attack everyone and everything, but in failing to have convictions and a particular point of view, he reveals that in presenting other identities he has lost his true one. In this regard and in this novel, however, he is clearly not alone.

"Chatterton" is clearly not a conventional historical novel is that Ackroyd repeatedly plays with chronology. He is more interested in comparing and contrasting events than he is in sequencing them appropriately. There are four stories intertwined in this novel. Charles Wychwood is a contemporary figure, but also a failed and doomed poet, who is intrigued by a portrait which may or may not be of Chatterton. Since the painting is dated 1802, over three decades after Chatterton's suicide, it may or may not be real, but if it is, it raises the question of whether Chatterton really committed suicide in 1770. Could that have been but another instance of transformation and a means of adopting a new identity? In contrast there is Harriet Scrope, a popular novelist who has engaged in fakery and plagiarism her entire literary career and who is now trying to write her memoirs. She has a friend, Sarah Tilt, who is an art historian writing a book about death paintings and once again we have a painting whose authenticity raises interesting questions.

This leads us to George Meredith, a poet who was used by the painter Wallis as the model for his "Death of Chatterton" painting. In one of those true stories that reads like bad soap opera, the painter ran off with Mrs. Meredith, only to abandon her after she became pregnant. Consequently, Meredith becomes susceptible to the romantic tragedy of Chatterton's death as well. Chatterton himself is presented by means of an autobiographical document, which comes into the possession of Wychwood, drawing the little circle of characters even closer despite the disparate times and places of their existence.

Even without my detailing them you can get a sense for how these four stories are interwoven, the myriad possibilities of linkage drawing the reader further and further into Ackroyd's narrative web. The narrative structure, if we can even call it that, may well be too postmodern for some tastes, but there is a structure here and not some sort of episodic free association. I find it provocative and compelling. Of course every major character in the book wears masks within masks and the novel circles around its meaning rather than arriving at a profound and calculated conclusion. Ultimately, for me, Chatterton is not so much the main character as the dominant metaphor for Ackroyd's novel.

Pickwick Papers is a wonderful book, and no doubt much has been written about it in academic and literary circles. But from a layman's perspective, it is simply a fun read. One would almost think it the work of a great master approaching the end of a career, consciously deciding to lay down the heartache of Great Expectations or the martyrdom of A Tale of Two Cities to take a jovial and whimsical jaunt through the English language and the realm of imagination. Yet the bumbling and somehow delightful misadventures of the Pickwickians fall at the beginning of Dickens' career. Comic relief is offered well before Hard Times sets in.

Take an independently wealthy, magnanimous old fellow and surround him with a group of close friends. Send them together on a journey of desire to explore the world about them, meet new people, and experience the fullness of life, and you essentially have the plot of Pickwick Papers. The plethora of characters Dickens introduces along the way add considerable color to the narrative, not only because they come from such a vast array of backgrounds, but because they themselves are colorful in their own right:

The first and most obvious example might be that of Mr. Alfred Jingle, the loquacious vagabond rapscallion who rescues the Pickwickians from an altercation with a feisty coach driver. One of Mr. Pickwicks cohorts, Mr. Snodgrass, receives a blow to the eye during the incident, after which Mr. Jingle is pleased to suggest the most efficacious remedies: "Glasses round-brandy and water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty-eye damaged, sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient-damned odd, standing in the open street half an hour with your eye against a lamp-post-eh-very good-ha! ha!" While Pickwick reads the legend of Prince Bladud by candlelight, we find this description of King Hudibras: "A great many centuries since, there flourished, in great state, the famous and renowned Lud Hudibras, king of Britain. He was a mighty monarch. The earth shook when he walked-he was so very stout. His people basked in the light of his countenance-it was so red and glowing. He was, indeed, every inch a king. And there were a good many inches of him too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height he made up in circumference." The young surgeon, Benjamin Allen, is described as "a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short and a white face cut rather long [...] He presented altogether, rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas." Dickens notes that the casual visitor to the Insolvent Court "might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness" and whose vapors are "like those of a fungus pit." Seated in this luxuriant ambience, we find an attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, who "was a fat, flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered." A final sample from a list of worthy characters too long to mention might be Mr. Smangle, the boisterous whiskered man whom Pickwick encounters in debtors prison: "This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never can be seen in full perfection but in such places; they may be met with, in an imperfect state, occasionally about the stable-yards and public-houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds, which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature for the sole purpose of rearing them [...] There was a rakish vagabond smartness and a kind of boastful rascality about the whole man that was worth a mine of gold."

The book itself is a goldmine full of textures, personas, venues, and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age. These are delight to behold, as the reader is thus invited to enjoy experience and descriptive beauty for their own sakes. Plot largely takes a backseat to the development of relationships, which can be seen as a myriad of subplots contributing to a never-ending story. Numerous vignettes which are incidental to the narrative add another level of richness, and it seems clear that Dickens offers them for an enjoyment all their own. There is something of "l'art pour l'art" throughout the whole work which expresses a love of language and a love of human nature. As Dickens might have summed it up, "All this was very snug and pleasant."

The Pickwick Papers, (or rather The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) although not Dickens' best work, is still a wondeful novel. The writing isn't as consistently good as it is in his later novels, but none of the writing is bad, and there are several flashes of brilliance which seem to herald what Dickens' would become when his genius had time to ripen (one of these can be found at the end of chapter 44, a beautifully written account of the death of a prisoner in a debtor's prison). In the beginning, despite being very funny, the novel, and indeed Mr. Pickwick, may seem rather inane. Keep reading. The story of Mr. Pickwick's trial and eventual imprisonment is one of the most brilliant pieces of comic literature, and Mr. Pickwick grows into a truly monumental character by the end. And Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's cockney servant, is one of the best characters in all of Dickens. Clever, witty, and cynical, he seems to light up every page. The book has a very happy ending, in which all loose ends are tied together and every character gets what he or she deserves. It is truly uplifting. I strongly reccommend this book.

Charles Dickens' first novel, Pickwick Papers follows the adventures of the Pickwick Club as they involve themselves in comic mishaps and misunderstandings. His travels as a newspaper reporter acquainted Dickens with the coaches, coaching houses, and inns of England which he uses as settings in Pickwick Papers. Gradually he abandons the use of the club format, which he found too restrictive.

Dickens' fame and popularity were forever established with the introduction of his greatest comic characrter, the immortal Sam Weller as Mr Pickwick's servant. Pickwick Papers contains some of Dickens' greatest characters: Mr Pickwick, the most interesting title character; the strolling actor Jingle and his friend Job Trotter; Sam's father Tony Weller who battles with the red-nosed Rev Stiggins; and the Fat Boy.

Memorable scenes include Christmas in the country, a Parliamentary election, and the famous court trial, which Dickens frequently recited on his reading tours.

I highly recommend this book if you've never read Dickens before. This is a must-have for Dickens fans.

The world that Thomas More lived in, the ideas that motivated him, and the reasons he did the things that he did, are so different from the world we live in today that it may be hard for people living today to really understand them. Peter Ackroyd, however, does a superb job of placing us in that world, and inside More's head, thus giving us a portrait of a great man living on the cusp of a world-changing transformation, as the Renaissance gave way to the Enlightenment.

After reading Ackroyd's portrait, however, I find myself of two minds about Thomas More. I admire his devotion to the truth, and his refusal to bow to the demands of Henry VIII. As a Catholic, I admire his devotion to the Church and honor him as the martyr and saint that he is. At the same time, and as Ackroyd shows in this unvarnished biography, this is the same man who sent "heretics" to the stake, or to be beheaded, thus seeming to give sanction to the very methods that, in the hands of others, led to his own death. Read the book for yourself, though, and make up your own mind.

Peter Ackroyd's love of London and its stories shines through in this wonderful book. The life of Thomas More is one of the great stories of London. Ackroyd is unmatched in his ability to give just the right historical context to make his telling of his subject's story vivid and alive. The author loves his subject enough to give More an honest and complex portrait. The writing is wonderful, but there is also no white washing or simplifying for the kiddies.

Yet More's greatness and honesty are clear and impressive. His humanity and what we would judge as failings (often mistakenly, I believe) serve, in my mind, to accentuate what he was able to become out of the lump of imperfect clay we all are. His work and faith and integrity stand as a monument to his name for all time.

There are some wonderful pictures and discussions of the portraits in the context of More's life. This is very good stuff and I am grateful to the author for this brilliant book.

Sir Thomas More was described by brother-in-Humanism, Erasmus as "virum omninium horarum"(p. 52). Robert Bolt's play translates this illustrious sobriquet,"a man for all seasons." In his erudite, fascinatingly descriptive LIFE of THOMAS MORE, Peter Ackroyd has employed manifest powers of scholarship and love of subject to write a biography that will no doubt earn regard among THE definitive. Some readers may find the immense zeit-geist(era)detail;and description of More's education...along with characterization of mentors and spiritual/intellectual influences...distracting, even tedious. On the contrary, the excellence of Ackroyd's effort is to CONSTRUCT before an attentive reader: TIME(incipient Reformation); PLACE(London, as a Center of Western Christendom);and the MAN( as he was; not as Post-Modernist Deconstructionist/revisionists say he was, or should have been).

The award winning author of LONDON crafts a "living" city. Within this ambience,he delineates More's demanding legal education regimen in a time where LAW defined class and art/craft of POWER. Secular and Ecclesiastical Law--literally--vied for men's souls as well as ordinary compliance within the polity. Chapter VI: DUTY is the LOVE of the LAW is crucial to understanding Thomas More as being practical and singularly A MAN of his TIME...as well as "man for all seasons" whom Winston Churchill is said to aver "the greatest Englishman these isles have ever produced." More's conflict--absolute preeminence of spiritual/Ecclesiatical law over against a growing body of utilitarian, civil law--IS the essence of his story. Well known, it ends in reluctant defiance of the King's "Dieu et Mon Droit"(when human "Droit" is declared precedent to God's Law); martyrdom; and eventual Sainthood. A materialist,secular culture as ours might,indeed, find More's defiance "disproportionate obstinacy" rather than heroic. But as Ackroyd's information and impact of More's "gravitas" become "overwhelming", one's convictions are tested like More's( or any "educated" Englishman)in the days following LUTHER's Reformation and HENRY VIII's peremptory Edicts on royal SUCCESSION and--for More--far more importantly,SUPREMACY over Christians and Christ's Church.

Deconstructionists(Harvard's Richard Marius, for example)place great weight on their own interpretation of what More "must have thought" or "should have acted". Ackroyd tries to characterize. He quotes "olde" English from oral and written records. He cites words and actions which publically ( More's Chancellorship); relgiously (attendance at daily Mass and observance of "hair shirt"penance); and intellectually(renowned authorship of tracts, letters and political satire,UTOPIA); reveal him. For example, that More was vigorous prosecutor of heretics is neither denied nor concealed. In that TIME, heretics--as enemies of the Universal(Catholic)Church--were both enemies of God and The State (more properly The Commonwealth of Christendom; of which all European Kingdoms were precedentially and intrinsically part). The book itself is well-appointed with classic portraits of More; Erasmus; Henry VIII; Cromwell; Luther: Henry's Wives and numerous other players. The bibliography is formidable and by-the-chapter SOURCE notes very helpful. This is a great book. It is excellent portrait of a good man of great talent,"not to the manner born, but trained" to be counselor to the King.His fate is well known. The book, to this reader, marks well emerging tragedy in integrity and heroism which The Roman Catholic Church still regards worthy of declared SAINTHOOD. In a time like ours the exploration of INTEGRITY alone makes The Life of THOMAS MORE well worth considered reading...(10 stars)

Peter Ackroyd has a frustrating habit of taking absolutely wonderful premises, such as this one, and turning them into quite dull books. Occasionally he writes wonderfully, but he appears to have no idea of human emotion, and as normal his characters here are like stilted wooden puppets.

"Milton in America" is another piece of historical fiction by Peter Ackroyd, in which John Milton, accompanied by the boy Goosequill, flees England in 1660 for the sanctuary of America.

Milton swiftly becomes the leading light of the Puritan settlement he (somewhat fortuitously) arrives at. The Brethren rename the settlement "New Milton" in his honour. However, tensions arise, not only between the native Americans and the Puritans, but also between the Puritans and a neighbouring group of Catholic settlers.

"Milton in America" is at times funny, ironic and tragic. The main part of the plot revolves around the irony that Milton's flight from religious persecution does nothing to stop him resurrecting religious intolerance (that is, his own) in the New World. As such, the novel is a critique both of religious intolerance and of the oppressive nature of organised religions. It's much less of an historical mystery than Ackroyd's other novels, much more of a morality tale. Very well written, entertaining and thought-provoking.

G Rodgers

I'll leave it to other reviewers to summarize the plot of this excellent novel, instead calling your attention to the significant episode when Milton disappears from his Puritan village for 6 weeks, regains his lost sight, and is welcomed as an equal when adopted by an native tribe--whose mysterious animism he, in turn, adopts. We see a great 17th-century intellect overwhelmed by a 21st-century spirituality, and we contemplate the structure of faith, intellect, history and truth. Structure is a theme, too, as again Ackroyd's modus operandi is a strand of narratives and narrators whose knot of stories are worth the reader's untying. Of course, Ackroyd's protagonist is a Milton, not the Milton; and this Milton is a doer, not a writer. As another English revolutionary, GBS's John Tanner, said, "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." So the novel never mentions "Paradise Lost" because Ackroyd's Milton has come to America to regain the paradise--to 'do' paradise--rather than stagnate in Restoration London to teach about a paradise in an epic poem. To take off from Stanley Fish's title on "Paradise Lost," we are surprised by Milton's virtue when he becomes our post-Christian co-religionist. By far, this is Ackroyd's best book from the 14 novels, biographies and critical studies of his that I've read. And the best Milton I've read in a many a year.

This novel has stayed on my mind ever since I read it. It's so frustrating that Dickens died before completing this novel. On the other hand, the fact that this classic British mystery was never finished has created a great opportunity for literary critics and mystery lovers alike to try to solve the mystery for themselves. We'll never know who Dickens really had in mind as the murderer, or if indeed there was a murder after all. That's a huge loss. But it's a great ride for readers to try to make up their own minds.

I still haven't made up my mind about who did it. Sure, there is a very obvious suspect in Jasper, but that doesn't mean Dickens thought he did it. Some people have speculated that Dickens wrote this novel as a tribute to his friend Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone," so perhaps the opium addiction would have played a huge part in the mystery. It's even possible that Dickens saw a bit of himself in Jasper's tortured love life because of the way it paralleled his own life. After all, Cloisterham is supposed to be based on Dickens' Rochester. Then again, just because Dickens sympathized with someone, that doesn't mean that character was innocent, either, does it? Now you see why this story continues to torment mystery lovers.

Like any other Dickens novel, this one has lots of memorable characters, from the suspicious and tormented Jasper to the Reverend Crisparkle to Princess Puffer. And of course, the enigmatic Datchery. The gravedigger and his obnoxious but perceptive boy assistant provide both Dickensian eccentric characters and possible clues.

The power of this book even today is clear in the way it inspired an award-winning Broadway musical where the audience got to solve the mystery on their own. (By the way, 1935 movie with Claude Rains was good, but some of the main characters were cut out, and others seemed little like the characters in the book, even if they were fine actors.)

Anne M. Marble
All About Romance and Holly Lisle's Forward Motion Writing Community

It is a tribute to Charles Dickens' reputation that to this day this unfinished novel, a mystery no less, still garners such speculation as to who allegedly murdered Edwin Drood. There are organizations created for the sole purpose of analyzing the novel and to theorizing whom the culprit may have been, if indeed there really was a culprit. After all, only Drood's watch and his shirt pin are produced, not his body.

As in all of Dickens' novels, the characterizations are the thing. You have the innocent young woman with the somewhat eccentric guardian and his Bob Cratchitlike assistant. There is the dark, possibly unfairly accused, but hot headed antagonist of Drood. Then there is Drood's brooding choirmaster uncle, John Jasper, who frequents opium dens, and who may or may not have ulterior motives in his seeking revenge. Durdles, the stone mason, and a somewhat weird character, provides some chilling comic relief in cemetery scenes with his stone throwing assistant. There are also the typical Dickensian characters, which includes a snooty older woman, a class conscious, spinsterish school mistress, and in a hilarious restaurant scene, an unappreciated, hard working "flying waiter" and a lazy, wise acre "stationary waiter."

It is a shame that Dickens died before he could complete "Edwin Drood." What is here are the beginnings of an exploration of man's dual nature, a journey into "the heart of darkness" so to speak.

It is so strange to see a long, well-plotted novel suddenly come to a dead stop. (Of a projected twelve episodes, Dickens wrote six before his death.) The title character is either murdered or missing, and a large cast of characters in London and Cloisterham (Dickens's Rochester) are involved in their own way in discovering what happened to Edwin Drood.

There is first of all John Jasper, an opium addict who suspiciously loves Drood's ex-fiancee; there is a nameless old woman who dealt him the opium who is trying to nail Jasper; there is a suspicious pile of quicklime Jasper notices during a late night stroll through the cathedral precincts; there is Durdles who knows all the secrets of the Cathedral of Cloisterham's underground burial chambers; there is the "deputy," a boy in the pay of several characters who has seen all the comings and goings; there are the Anglo-Indian Landless twins, one of whom developed a suspicious loathing for Drood; there is the lovely Rosebud, unwilling target of every man's affections; and we haven't even begun talking about Canon Crisparkle, Datchery, Tartar, and a host of other characters. All we know is that the game is afoot, but we'll never know the outcome.

It would have been nice to know how Dickens tied together all these threads, but we can still enjoy THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD because -- wherever Dickens was heading with it -- it is very evidently the equal of his best works. Life is fleeting, and not all masterpieces are finished.

A "biography" is the story of a life, usually told more or less in chronological order. Peter Ackroyd's London, however, is really a series of interconnected essays on London: on food, on drink, on the weather, on fog, on darkness, on streetlights, etc. Too many of these essays take the form of a set of quotes, each followed by a sentence or two of explication, rather than brief narratives. Ackroyd has found some great quotes, and some fascinating facts, and does a superb job evoking the feeling of the city at different times and in different aspects. When he does tell a story, such as the story of the Gordon riots, he tells it well. I was left looking for more story, and fewer quotes.

This immense compilation of research, observations, and vivid imagery about the city of London is a remarkable feat. As one reads through the book, starting with the original settlers of the Londinium area, through Roman occupation, and eventually a melding of cultures, one senses that Mr. Ackroyd breathes not just life, but a strong personality into the city of London. One can almost feel her shift and groan through the ages, accompanied by fires, pollution, bombings, and restructuring of buildings. I felt that the author was talking more about a personality that he loved rather than a city.

What I like most about the book is the organized, easy to follow timeline. Literally peppered with quotes from Londoners and the author's personal feelings, it was fascinating to read, and simple to digest. I had the opportunity to read the book once during a trip to this city and prior to another visit. The history of landmarks opened up a new perspective. I was not just seeing Covent Garden with the current stores and structures. I was walking in a former "Convent Garden", that later became a market, which is currently a market of street talent, modern stores, and different walks of life. London does not change easily.

I highly recommend this book to individuals interested in English History and people who love to visit London. It provides an in depth perspective of this incredible city, delving below the surface, and introducing a London that is mysterious and engaging.

Those of you hankering for British history will love this book. It takes you through English history through the "eyes" of London.

I loved it!

This immense compilation of research, observations, and vivid imagery about the city of London is a remarkable feat. As one reads through the book, starting with the original settlers of the Londinium area, through Roman occupation, and eventually a melding of cultures, one senses that Mr. Ackroyd breathes not just life, but a strong personality into the city of London. One can almost feel her shift and groan through the ages, accompanied by fires, pollution, bombings, and restructuring of buildings. I felt that the author was talking more about a personality that he loved rather than a city.

What I like most about the book is the organized, easy to follow timeline. Literally peppered wtih quotes from Londoners and the author's personal feelings, it was fascinating to read, and simple to digest. I had the opportunity to read the book once during a trip to this city and prior to another visit. The history of landmarks opened up a new perspective. I was not just seeing Covent Garden with the current stores and structures. I was walking in a former "Convent Garden", that later became a market, which is currently a market of street talent, modern stores, and different walks of life. London does not change easily.

I highly recommend this book to individuals interested in English History and people who love to visit London. It provides an in depth perspective of this incredible city, delving below the surface, and introducing a London that is mysterious and engaging.

What a wonderful and magical book. It isn't the normal left-to-right chronological history. It is a series of chapters that each examine a different aspect of London's character. That is why it is aptly called a biography. Rather than a sequential history we get a study of the character of this magnificent city. I have grown to love London through a series of business trips that led to a few personal trips. It would be very satisfying to be able to live in London for some period of time, I think. But...

You don't need to have been to London or know much about it to get a great deal from this book. But if you can bring some experience and background to reading it you will find the rewards for reading so much greater.

As background material Stephen Inwood's wonderful "A History of London", now in paperback, provides a splendid chronology of London's history. I recommend it highly and you can read my comments on it on Amazon.com. My personal taste is to read the Inwood and then read the Ackroyd. But the point is to have both. Together they tell more about London than either does separately. They are complementary rather than competitive. Simplistically, you can say the Inwood book gives you the breadth and the Ackroyd book provides the depth.

Also, you will get more out of this book if you have a good map of London at your side. The book does have some maps, but if you want a good feel for how all of this fits into the London of today you might want to have a London A-Z with you as a reference. A standard one has the ISBN: 0850397529.

Also, another magnificent companion to this book is "The History of London in Maps" its ISBN# is:1558594957 although it has limited availability.

London is an easy city to love and I think Ackroyd says it so well on page 93: "The History of London is a palimpsest of different realities and lingering truths." And in the books last two sentences: "It is illimitable. It is infinite London." Glorious!

I read this on Michael Moorcock's recommendation. Moorcock is the acknowledged father of the London antimodernists (a kind of 21st century PreRaphaelite literary movement associated with a fascination for ancient stories, popular culture and literary experiment). He has frequently praised Mr Ackroyd's biographies. Dickens, one of Ackroyd's first biographies, was a revelation to me and his Blake was the most remarkable exercise of its kind. While Ackroyd lacks the reputation for experiment shared by his colleagues Iain Sinclair (of Downriver and Lights Out For The City) and Michael Moorcock (King of the City, London Bone and Mother London) he is actually a rather clever subversive, presenting a highly idiosyncratic image of his native city which, like the images of Dickens and Conan Doyle, takes us over. Ackroyd's vision of London becomes more real than the reality.
It is certainly more valid than most realities tourists experience on their brief skim across this ancient, beautiful, ugly, cruel, humane city where so much of our history begins. This is an outstanding book. It has warmth, enthusiasm. It informs on more than one level. I have fallen in love with it!

Though it's rather slow to get going in the initial chapters, Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" builds up into a splendidly effective piece, written in highly polished prose. Dorian Gray, who is suggestively described as "charming" and "beautiful" ... is painted by his friend and admirer, Basil Hallward. Dorian, a self-centered social luminary whose character is reminiscent of Narcissus, makes a bizarre sub-Faustian wish which tragically comes true: that his beautiful portrait may age, while he retains his youthful looks. The conclusion is disastrous, the culmination of a narrative containing elements of murder, suicide, blackmail, a confrontation in a grimy alley and an episode in an opium den. The characters are very well sketched out, particularly the triad of Dorian, Basil and the intellectual cynic, Lord Henry, Dorian's mentor and the mouthpiece of some of Wilde's most cutting amoral opinions. The style is, typically, marvellous, characterised by brilliant exchanges and aphoristic gaiety. Wilde lacerates English bourgeois culture, the conceptions of sin and virtue and the attitudes towards art of his time with tremendous aplomb. Some of his quips are patently snide, sometimes mysogynistic, as in: "Woman represents the triumph of matter over mind, while man represents the triumph of mind over morals." Oh, isn't that just despicable?! I love it!

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a story of morals, psychology and poetic justice, has furnished Oscar Wilde with the status of a classical writer. It takes place in 19th-century England, and tells of a man in the bloom of his youth who will remain forever young.

Basil Hallward is a merely average painter until he meets Dorian Gray and becomes his friend. But Dorian, who is blessed with an angelic beauty, inspires Hallward to create his ultimate masterpiece. Awed by the perfection of this rendering, he utters the wish to be able to retain the good looks of his youth while the picture were the one to deteriorate with age. But when Dorian discovers the painting cruelly altered and realizes that his wish has been fulfilled, he ponders changing his hedonistic approach.

Dorian Gray's sharp social criticism has provoked audible controversy and protest upon the book's 1890 publication, and only years later was it to rise to classical status. Written in the style of a Greek tragedy, it is popularly interpreted as an analogy to Wilde's own tragic life. Despite this, the book is laced with the right amounts of the author's perpetual jaunty wit.

This sophisticated but crude novel is the story of man's eternal desire for perennial youth, of our vanity and frivolity, of the dangers of messing with the laws of life. Just like "Faust" and "The immortal" by Borges.

Dorian Gray is beautiful and irresistible. He is a socialité with a high ego and superficial thinking. When his friend Basil Hallward paints his portrait, Gray expresses his wish that he could stay forever as young and charming as the portrait. The wish comes true.

Allured by his depraved friend Henry Wotton, perhaps the best character of the book, Gray jumps into a life of utter pervertion and sin. But, every time he sins, the portrait gets older, while Gray stays young and healthy. His life turns into a maelstrom of sex, lies, murder and crime. Some day he will want to cancel the deal and be normal again. But Fate has other plans.

Wilde, a man of the world who vaguely resembles Gray, wrote this masterpiece with a great but dark sense of humor, saying every thing he has to say. It is an ironic view of vanity, of superflous desires. Gray is a man destroyed by his very beauty, to whom an unknown magical power gave the chance to contemplate in his own portrait all the vices that his looks and the world put in his hands. Love becomes carnal lust; passion becomes crime. The characters and the scenes are perfect. Wilde's wit and sarcasm come in full splendor to tell us that the world is dangerous for the soul, when its rules are not followed. But, and it's a big but, it is not a moralizing story. Wilde was not the man to do that. It is a fierce and unrepressed exposition of all the ugly side of us humans, when unchecked by nature. To be rich, beautiful and eternally young is a sure way to hell. And the writing makes it a classical novel. Come go with Wotton and Wilde to the theater, and then to an orgy. You'll wish you age peacefully.

Like many other high schoolers who wrote reviews on this page, I was forced to read this in my freshman english class. I thought it was an extremely good story. The characters (my favorites being Orlick and Trabb's Boy) are brilliant and subtley funny. The story is creative and unpredictible, and overall, it was absolutely supberb. The only reason this book doesn't get 5 stars is because it tends to drag a lot of the time, and Dickens overlong descriptions are a bit grating on the nerves, but I DO understand why people would have liked it like that in the 1800's. They liked their books long and juicy. It's a bit dated but Great Expectations is well worth a read if you have the patience. Even if you are impatient, you can not miss this great story and its wonderful characters, so at least see one of the many great movie adaptions. My personal favorite movie version of Great Expectations is the 1999 Masterpiece theatre version.

Having seen the many reviews written by students, I must say that I would agree. In fact, they sounded like they could have almost been my students from the past. Overall, GE is well liked, but the major complaint most have is that the story line is too slow-developing. I think this is a fair assessment. Of course, this was the style chosen by Dickens since this book was compiled from serial form. How many people would claim that we ought to take a week's worth of a soap opera program and turn it into a movie? I doubt such a production would attract much attention. In the same way, a serial writer's objective was to build mini-climaxes throughout the book, twisting and turning to get the audience to scream with anticipation, so that the next segment would sell. From what I understand, Americans could hardly wait for the shipments to get off the ships. They would purchase the newest segment and immediately dig in!

If you are a teacher, I highly recommend showing the 4-hour movie starring Anthony Hopkins (produced in the late 1980s, I believe). It is the best and most accurate of all the GE movies. This works really well in conjunction with the book, and it truly helps in the interest level for those students who are not as motivated as "the readers." So go ahead and find out about the adventures of squeezable Pip, lovable Joe, the mysterious Miss Havisham, sweet Biddy, snooty Estella, and of course the mysterious Magwitch. I think you will be as surprised as I was when I first read it. (I've read an abridged version four or five times!)

When his magazine, All the Year Round, began failing due to an unpopular serial, Dickens was forced to begin publishing installments of a story of his own. The resulting work, Great Expectations, was published weekly from December 1, 1860 to August 3, 1861. This was his second semi-autobiographical work, but where David Copperfield was a confident expression of faith in middle class values, Great Expectations offers a bleaker view of whether those values will lead to happiness. In fact, Dickens own marriage had just come to an end after many unhappy years. Indeed he had recently changed the name of the magazine from the more bucolic Household Words. Despite, or because, of this ambivalence, Great Expectations became one of his greatest achievements.

Pip, a boy of the marshes, is being "raised by hand" by his shrieking harridan of an older sister and her seemingly doltish husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. One day, while visiting his parents' gravesite, Pip is accosted by an escaped convict who demands that he bring him a file and some "wittles". When the convict, Abel Magwitch, is later captured, he accepts the blame for stealing the file and food before being carted back to prison.

Shortly thereafter, Pip is invited up to Miss Havisham's manor house to play with her beautiful ward Estella. Miss Havisham's life came to a halt when she was jilted at the altar, all clocks are stopped at the hour of her betrayal, the feast lies rotting on tables & she wanders about in the decaying wedding gown. Estella is to be the instrument of her revenge upon men.

Eventually, "Great Expectations" are settled upon Pip when a secret benefactor sets up a trust in his name and sends him to London to be educated and become a gentleman. Pip assumes, and Havisham allows him to believe, that she is his benefactress and that he is being elevated to a position that will make him worthy of Estella.

As Pip rises in society, he leaves Joe behind, despite the many kindnesses Joe had shown him growing up. He becomes a shallow arrogant middle class climber. So he is stunned when he discovers that he is actually benefiting from the secret wealth of Magwitch, who made a fortune in Australia after being transported. Moreover, Magwitch's unlawful return to England puts him and Pip in danger. Meanwhile, Estella has married another, a horrible man who Pip despises. Eventually, with Magwitch's recapture and death in prison and with his fortune gone, Pip ends up in debtors prison, but Joe redeems his debts and brings him home. Pip realizes that Magwitch was a more devoted friend to him than he ever was to Joe and with this realization Pip becomes, finally, a whole and decent human being.

Originally, Dickens wrote a conclusion that made it clear that Pip and Estella will never be together, that Estella is finally too devoid of heart to love. But at the urging of others, he changed the ending and left it more open ended, with the possibility that Estella too has learned and grown from her experiences and her wretched marriages.

This is the work of a mature novelist at the height of his powers. It has everything you could ask for in a novel: central characters who actually change and grow over the course of the story, becoming better people in the end; a plot laden with mystery and irony; amusing secondary characters; you name it, it's in here. I would rank it with A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield among the very best novels of the worlds greatest novelist.

GRADE: A+