ck_, who had constituted himself a veritable encyclopaedia of
information about Dickens, and had clung to his subject (in spite of
many rebuffs which his peremptory temper found it hard to digest) as
tightly as ever Boswell had enveloped Johnson. Two volumes of
Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_ appeared in 1872 and a third in
1874. He relied much on Dickens's letters to himself and produced what
must always remain the authoritative work. The first two volumes are
put together with much art, the portrait as a whole has been regarded
as truthful, and the immediate success was extraordinary. In the
opinion of Carlyle, Forster's book was not unworthy to be named after
that of Boswell. A useful abridgment was carried out in 1903 by the
novelist George Gissing. Gissing also wrote _Charles Dickens: A
Critical Study_ (1898), which ranks with G.K. Chesterton's _Charles
Dickens_(1906) as a commentary inspired by deep insight and adorned by
great literary talent upon the genius of the master-novelist. The
names of other lives, sketches, articles and estimates of Dickens and
his works would occupy a large volume in the mere enumeration. See
R.H. Shepherd, _The Bibliography of Dickens_ (1880); _James Cooke's
Bibliography of the Writings of Charles Dickens_ (1879);
_Dickensiana_, by F. G. Kitton (1886); and _Bibliography_ by J.P.
Anderson, appended to Sir F.T. Marzials's _Life of Charles Dickens_
(1887). Among the earlier sketches may be specially cited the lives by
J. C. Hotten and G. A. Sala (1870), the Anecdote-Biography edited by
the American R. H. Stoddard (1874), Dr A. W. Ward in the English Men
of Letters Series (1878), that by Sir Leslie Stephen in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, and that by Professor Minto in the
eighth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The _Letters_ were
first issued in two volumes edited by his daughter and sister-in-law
in 1880. For Dickens's connexion with Kent the following books are
specially valuable:--Robert Langton's _Childhood and Youth of Charles
Dickens_ (1883); Langton's _Dickens and Rochester_ (1880); Thomas
Frost's _In Kent with Charles Dickens_ (1880); F. G. Kitton's _The
Dickens Country_ (1905); H. S. Ward's _The Real Dickens Land_ (1904);
R. Allbut's _Rambles in Dickens Land_ (1899 and 1903). For Dickens's
reading tours see G. Dolby's _Charles Dickens as I knew him_ (1884);
J. T. Fields's _In and Out of D