Dickens (1812-70) was a busy man whose brain was crammed and active. Rapid, peripatetic movement gave him relief from the pressure of his roiling thoughts. Grab a Copy.

In his later years Charles Dickens was almost as famous a reader as he was a writer. What he read were his own works, aloud, before huge, rapturous, often hysterical audiences in England, Scotland ...

I asked Mays why Dickens endures. “His sense of social outrage, his descriptions of misery are balanced by a celebration of the zest, the fun of life,” he replied.