What a charmer

Wow: those of us who read Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives already knew that Charles Dickens was a total asshole to his wife Catherine, but a recent discovery indicates that he was even worse than previously supposed. University of York professor John Bowen uncovered a trove of letters that suggest that Dickens actually attempted to have his wife shut away in a lunatic asylum, the better to carry on his affair with then-18-year-old actress Ellen Ternan.