A Summer That Ended a Friendship: Dickens and Andersen’s Painful Breakup Inspires New Novel

A forthcoming novel by Francine Prose delves into a little-known chapter in literary history — the ill-fated friendship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen.

Five Weeks in the Country, to be released next year by Harper (an imprint of HarperCollins), revisits the summer of 1857, when Andersen accepted an invitation to stay at Dickens’ country estate outside London. According to People, Prose recently revealed the book’s cover and shared details about the real-life inspiration behind the story.

The novel reimagines Andersen’s visit, which began with promise but quickly turned awkward. At the time, British papers were abuzz with doomsday predictions about a comet, while inside the Dickens household, tensions were growing. Dickens’ marriage to his wife, Catherine, was strained, and his infatuation with a young actress was causing turmoil at home. Andersen’s social missteps and eccentric behavior only added to the discomfort.

As Prose describes, the visit — which lasted five uneasy weeks — became both tragic and absurd, ultimately ending the writers’ friendship. Yet for Andersen, those humiliations became material for art and self-understanding.

“In 1857, Hans Christian Andersen visited Charles Dickens, his wife and nine children for five comically and heartbreakingly awkward weeks,” Prose told People. “Their story felt like the perfect way to write about creativity, love, family, and what it means to be an artist caught between public image and private life.”

Prose, a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellow and author of more than 20 works of fiction, is best known for Blue Angel (a National Book Award finalist) and Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932.

Photo: HarperCollins Publishers; Frances F. Denny