Not many people know that Charles Dickens was an actor as well as a writer. A workaholic who was haunted by memories of his impoverished childhood, when he worked in a blacking factory, Dickens was never the most emotionally stable of men at the best of times, never mind at the worst. In 1857 his friend Wilkie Collins wrote a play about a failed Arctic expedition. Dickens became obsessed with it and, like a rapper who's tired of the recording studio, volunteered to play the role of the villain. Then he fell in love with his 18-year-old co-star and left his wife.rnYou couldn't exactly say that Dickens is hot right now, but something is going on with him. Not just with his work, but with Dickens the person. So far this year he's turned up as a character in Dan Simmons' Drood and Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens, both of which deal with his final, unfinished novel, The Mystery ofrnEdwin Drood. Writers love to prey on their own kind anyway, but what's so intriguing about Dickens is the disconnect between his life and his art. His novels are full of last-minute redemptions and neat resolutions, but his life was a mess worthy of reality TV.
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