Scholar of Charles Dickens who wrote a definitive biography and shone a light on the writer’s more neglected works
Michael Slater, who has died aged 88, was an expert on the life and writings of Charles Dickens. He sought to engage the widest possible readership in Dickens’s work, and to bring into the public domain all those writings that still lay in the shadows cast by the canonical novels and popular Christmas books.
His biography Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing (2009) gives a detailed account of Dickens’s life and the full range of his work, bringing out the web of connections between the two. He produced a four-volume edition of Dickens’ Journalism (1994-2000, with volume four co-edited with John Drew), and from 1993 was series editor of the multi-volume Everyman Dickens: all the novels, most of the minor works, the travel books, the writings for children, and the mass of hitherto neglected short stories culled from Dickens’s journals. Michael was excited by the range, richness and diversity of Dickens’s writings, and wanted them to excite others. His work significantly advanced Dickens’s reputation and opened new fields for research.
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