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Article: Dickens girl who never lost the plot; Critic's choice.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Daily Mail (London)
- Article date:
- August 18, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: VAL HENNESSY
KATEY by Lucinda Hawksley (Doubleday, [pounds sterling]20)
MANY people think of Charles Dickens as belonging to the mists of history. So the discovery that his daughter lived until 1929 might come as a huge surprise.
As will the fact that she smoked cigarettes, modelled for the artist Sir John Everett Millais and established herself as a highly regarded artist with something of a flirty reputation.
Certainly, the feisty Katey - as Lucinda Hawksley makes clear in her gripping biography - could not have been less like the drippy and insipid love-object Victorian heroines of Dickens's novels.
She was ...