Charles Dickens' Favorite Daughter: The Life, Loves, and Art of Katey Dickens Perugini

Great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, Hawksley (Charles Dickens: Dickens' Bicentenary), a travel writer and Dickens lecturer, releases a revised edition of her 2006 biography of Katey Dickens, the first edition of which was only published in the UK. Rarely has a Dickens child been the sole subject of an extensive study, but perhaps it is fitting that "Dickens' favorite daughter" should be highlighted, as she lived quite a full life. From Katey's unconsummated first marriage to Wilkie Collins's brother Charlie (English novelist Collins was a lifelong friend of Dickens) through her second successful marriage, to Italian painter Carlo Perugini, Hawksley paints a colorful portrait of her subject's complex personality. Katey's insights into the lives of her siblings are revealed, as well as those in her social circle, from the Collinses and Thackerays to painters Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais. As a sometime art historian (Essential Pre-Raphaelites), Hawksley illuminatingly analyzes Katey as a successful but financially struggling female painter.