Complete and unabridged, with 57 full-page plates by John Atkinson Grimshaw, James Tissot and William Powell Frith. The reading tour that killed Dickens, described by a friend who sat through it: what he cut, how he acted Sikes and Nancy, what the audiences did and what it cost him. Charles Kent edited the Sun and was close enough to be handed the reading copies with their stage marks still on them. It is the only detailed record of the greatest performance a novelist has given of his own work. Fifty-six plates of Victorian and Continental painting, from Millais to Tissot, carry the crowded rooms, letters and ceremonies of the age Dickens read to.