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(...) the creation of truly great art requires a degree of concentration, commitment, dedication, and preoccupation — of selfishness, in a word — that sets that artist apart and makes him not an outlaw, exactly, but a law unto himself. (...) Dickens was a reformer, a social improver, a champion of the poor, a man who used his own money to set up a school and shelter for prostitutes (even as, Claire Tomalin’s new biography suggests, he was himself an enthusiastic customer of streetwalkers). His popularity was such that by the mid-19th century he was probably the most beloved figure in England, more popular even than the queen.        Dickens had a wretched childhood and was determined to do better by his own children. And yet he was at best an indifferent, misguided, and often neglectful parent, and an even worse husband. His marriage to Catherine Hogarth was probably a mistake to begin with, and as she grew fat and sickly (ten pregnancies can’t hav...