Claire Tomalin

Tomalin's The Invisible Woman, published in 1990, pieced together the life of Nelly Ternan, the young actress who was Charles Dickens's secret companion for 13 years, from scraps of letters, account books and records her family had suppressed, and Dickens has never looked quite the same since. Her lives of Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Hardy share a gift for placing a writer in their household, money worries and friendships. Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year, is the warmest place to start.