Charles Dickens.

 

Ellen Ternan

The celebrated English author, Charles Dickens, basically dumped his wife for a younger woman. If you've seen pictures of the young actress, Ellen Ternan, you can see why. Dickens thought his wife had given him too many children and he blamed his wife for that and did try to have her committed to an asylum for lunatics. He treated her terribly and some of his friends thought so. I believe that his children didn't know about Ellen Ternan until after his death. 

I have read fourteen of Dickens novels including Bleak House which is probably my favourite of his novels. Betrayal is a feature of that novel but I don't think you can sum up that novel as easily as that, because there's a lot more going on. The novel is certainly an attack on the English legal system. There's a woman who makes a cameo appearance in the novel called Ms Whisk, who Dickens says believes that the only way to improve the world is by "the emancipation of Women from the thraldom of her Tyrant Man." Mrs Jellyby is another interesting character. Most of her time is taken up by writing begging letters to try and raise charitable funds for a tribe who live in Borrioboola-Gha, a remote region of Africa. Dickens isn't very sympathetic to Mrs Jellyby or her efforts. I think it's his way of saying charity begins at home. 

The author Peter Ackroyd has described Dickens as an "egregious racist' but if he was, he was no different from many of his contemporaries, in Victorian England. In Victorian England, nobody used the term ‘racism’. Nevertheless, it's clear from reading Martin Chuzzlewit that he didn't care for negro slavery or the American's. He did come close to supporting the Confederate States in the American Civil War which he thought was more about dollars and cents than emancipating black slaves.