Prof. Robert Garnett's book reviewed in Newsday

Charles Dickens in Love, a book written by English professor Robert Garnett, was reviewed by Newsday in a January 31 article.

From Newsday:

Robert Garnett's "Charles Dickens in Love" (Pegasus Books, $28.95) covers the Ternan affair as well as the impact of Hogarth and Beadnell. Garnett is a professor of English at Gettysburg College.

His account is exceedingly earnest and unduly sympathetic, as well as repetitive, equivocating and, to use one of his favorite words, "vexing." Garnett is better at discussing the classic fiction than the elusive facts. That's magnified with Ternan, with whom "he entered the labyrinth." Beadnell "taught him how passionately he could love, and how hard he could work." "Mary Hogarth, in fact, became his religion." They were his "muses and teachers in the school of love"

Wince away. And when Garnett compares Dickens with Faust or sets a scene with "Let's imagine . . .," you'll be ready to write your own ending to his unfinished "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."

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