The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin – this is about Nelly Ternan and her relationship, love affair we may have to say, with Charles Dickens – one of the greatest writers ever, whose Great Expectations is ranked 35th on The Greatest Books of All Time site…hundreds of books from this and other lists are reviewed on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin – this is about Nelly Ternan and her relationship, love affair we may have to say, with Charles Dickens – one of the greatest writers ever, whose Great Expectations is ranked 35^th on The Greatest Books of All Time site…hundreds of books from this and other lists are reviewed on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

8 out of 10

 

Great Expectations https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/05/great-expectations-based-very-loosely.html was one of my favorite books, and it is one of the topics of discussion in the Invisible Woman

 

In particular, it is the ending that is debated, the author has been under pressure, because of the initial finale, which was rather tragic, so, instead, he decided to put in a more evasive version, with shadows and ambiguity

Nelly Ternan talks about it, apparently regretting the original conclusion, maybe because her own love story has ended rather unhappily, the acclaimed novelist separates from his wife, publicly, but he would severe the connection with Nelly as well

 

We must keep in mind the fact that great minds have very dark corners, something evidenced in Intellectuals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html by Paul Johnson

Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others are famous for their formidable books, but in their private lives they have done great damage, Rousseau has abandoned his children

 

Nelly Ternan, aka The Invisible Woman, is an eighteen years old actress, and Chrales Dickens a celebrated forty-five years old writer, married and with Ten children, the novelist takes his wife to see this play, wherein Nelly is acting

Charles Dickens is not only accomplished as an author, he would have been as good as a thespian – we are told, it is insinuated, or this is just my conclusion – and he is a very entertaining guest, friend and companion

 

There has been some pushback in America, when a famous, surely rich football coach gave an interview, and his much younger girlfriend – there may be a forty years difference there – interfered and said ‘we don’t talk about that’

At issue was where they met, maybe tinder, a bar, who knows, but there was some condemnation, and then support from the MAGA crowd, infatuated with their Confidence Man  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/confidence-man-making-of-donald-trump.html or else Orange Woland

 

There are some remarkable scenes, in one, Mrs. Dickens comes to see Nelly on her birthday, and she gives her a gift, telling the much younger woman to open the box, in which there is a piece of jewelry, a ring, was it?

And then the married mother of ten explains that it was her…husband who had sent her -something we have confirmed by the man himself – and then something about a mistake and that she would never know, if attached to this author, who has the upper hand, the audience, the reading public, something to that effect

 

Nevertheless, Dickens and the young woman become lovers, though it is at a time when standards were different, there was opprobrium, but for the women, and we have the figure of Wilkie Collins present in the plot, a nice surprise, for I have reading and enjoying The Woman in White, over the past weeks, and look forward to The Moonstone

 

When Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857, she was 18: a professional actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep. He was 45: a literary legend, a national treasure, married with ten children. This meeting sparked a love affair that lasted over a decade, destroying Dickens's marriage and ending with Nelly's near-disappearance from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography, Claire Tomalin rescues Nelly from obscurity, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place in history, but also giving us a compelling and truthful account of the great Victorian novelist. Through Dickens's diaries, correspondence, address books, and photographs, Tomalin is able to reconstruct the relationship between Charles and Nelly, bringing it to vivid life. The result is a riveting literary detective story—and a portrait of a singular woman.

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’