ABSTRACT
Jeaffreson (1831–1901), novelist, biographer, and miscellaneous author, was an Oxford graduate. His Book of Recollections (2 vols., 1894) contains much gossip about Thackeray and about the London literary scene. The Rambler, reviewing his Novels and Novelists, felt obliged to ‘protest strongly against the absurd claim entered on [Dickens’s] behalf by Mr Jeaffreson, who really carried his admiration almost to profanity. A man who looks on Pickwick as inspired, and attributes all the progress of the present era to the attentive perusal of Nicholas Nickleby, Little Dorrit, and the rest, is clearly very unfit to sit in judgment on the great men. who, as novelists, must be submitted to his critical examination in a work like the one before us’ (n.s. x, 207).
